Ripple Effect
by Aurilia
Summary: Throw a stone in a still pond, you get ripples. Throw Remus and Harry into the Supernatural 'verse, you get even bigger ripples. Companion piece to Run for Your Life and Caleb Forrester. Harry Potter xover. Bill Harvelle is a main character.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by Eric Kripke; various production elements including, but not limited to, Warner Brothers and the CW network. No money is being made from this intellectual exercise and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** This is another side-story set in my _Run for Your Life_ universe and like with _Caleb Forrester_, you needn't have read RFYL in order to fully enjoy this particular fic. For followers of RFYL, this fic stands as a bit of backstory as to how, in RFYL, William Anthony Harvelle is still among the living in January of '03. (And no, this still isn't the fic I originally set out to write when I started CF – I tried working on it, only to find out I have to do this one first! Sigh…plotbunnies – can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em if I want a decent story.)

For anyone who hasn't yet read at least the first two chapters of RFYL, what you need to know boils down to the fact that Minerva McGonagall had an attack of conscious and retrieved Harry from the doorstep of number four, Privet Drive, (before Petunia had a chance to put out the milk bottles) and gave him to Remus Lupin to raise. Remus then took himself and Harry to the US in an effort to throw any revenge-seeking Death Eaters off their trail. He met John Winchester the night Mary died and, after spending a few weeks with Missouri Mosely, John and Remus and the boys went to Eagle Butte, South Dakota where they managed to make an odd sort of home with Bobby Singer.

This story takes place the first week of May, 1990, so this means that Dean is eleven, Harry is nine, and Sam turns seven during this timeframe. Jo is five, Remus is about to turn thirty, John is thirty-six, and Bobby is forty. Ellen is thirty-four and Bill is thirty-five. And lastly, Caleb is nineteen (which actually has more of a bearing on that stupid freakin' unwritten story that keeps spawning all these side-plots).

* * *

**Ripple Effect**

_Tuesday, May 1, 1990  
Odessa, Nebraska_

Ellen Harvelle absolutely and without a doubt _hated_ the first week of May. Bill did, too, for that matter, but at least _he _had something he could do to work out his frustrations. Like John Winchester had once said shortly after they met, 'There'll always be something to hunt.' It wasn't that Ellen disapproved of hunting; she actually threw her full support behind her husband (and had Jo not arrived, would likely have still been out there fighting by his side), but that first week of May was always a bad time for both of them and just _once_ she would have liked it if Bill had simply ignored the articles in the paper and actually spent the time at home for a change. However, her hopes would have to be put on hold for another year.

Compounding the normal issues she had with the first week of May, Jo had chicken pox. It was generally hard enough trying to both run the Roadhouse when Bill was gone and keep an eye on their daughter, but having to deal with both while the girl was feeling miserable and determined to share her misery with anyone who sat still long enough was _not_ something she enjoyed. She wished that the virus had decided to hold off for another week or two. She wished they could afford to just close the Roadhouse until Jo was better or that they had the spare cash to sink on hiring someone to help out. She wished again that she could either go with Bill or that Bill would stay home for a change.

_But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride._ The old saying didn't help with any of her frustrations. Nor did it help with the fact that a hunt had _finally_ shown its face that morning.

Almost the entirety of the month of April had been painfully quiet on the supernatural-nasty front, with only a single case showing up back on the twelfth (and that one had been one of the easiest hunts Bill had ever gone on; the drive to Corpus Christi had almost taken longer than the hunt itself). The only real event of any note was Jo's fifth birthday back on the seventh. The Roadhouse had been packed nearly beyond capacity; all four rooms above the bar had been rented out for a minimum of three days. John had the boys with him (something about a particularly nasty cursed object that Bobby had found on his last hunt in March) and they were sharing the largest of the rooms; Joshua and that teenage shadow he'd acquired a few years prior were bunked down in the smallest room (something to do with 'introducing the kid to the wider network'); Rebecca Connolly – one of the world's all-too-rare female professional truck-drivers and one of the very few people to frequent the Roadhouse who wasn't an active part of the hunting community – had been waiting for her rig to be fixed and had agreed to share a room with Raven (and she _still_ didn't know just what Raven had been doing there); and the last room held a hunter by the name of Kubrick who had been waiting on a call-back to tell him his recently-ordered RV was ready to be picked up (Ellen didn't particularly like Kubrick all that much – he made her skin crawl – but she supposed it had more to do with the fact that even Preacher and Pastor Jim felt him to be 'too preachy' than for any other reason). Somehow, word had gotten around that the daughter of the Roadhouse's owners was turning five, and by eight o'clock that evening, chaos ruled supreme. Ellen was ninety percent sure that Harry had been the one to spread the news – all through the party, he could be seen wearing a self-satisfied little smirk that seemed _far_ too mature an expression for the nine year-old.

Ellen pushed aside the memories of seeing hardened hunters act like six year-olds on sugar highs as Bill hung up the phone with a sigh. "Definitely something we should deal with," he said without preamble. "Still no clue exactly what it is, though."

Ellen nodded to show she'd heard him and glanced at the clock on the wall of their kitchen. It was just coming up on eight in the morning. She still needed to get Jo slathered in a layer of calamine before heading over to the Roadhouse for the day, but that could wait another ten minutes. "Tell me what you found out, honey."

Bill flipped to the beginning of his notes on the case – as he was more than a little compulsive about being orderly, the notes had their very own manila file-folder. When he finished the hunt, he would type up the notes he'd jotted down on a yellow legal pad and add the folder to the filing cabinet dedicated to his hunting that stood right next to the filing cabinet of records for the Roadhouse in the tavern's tiny office. "Well, you read the article, same as me." Ellen made an 'uh-huh' noise, recalling the details of the article in their three-days-late (courtesy of the USPS) _Los Angeles Times_ and poured the last of the coffee into their mugs.

**Fifth Body Found at Devil's Gate**

_P. Parker – Associated Press._ _Late last night, Rachel Munez of Altadena was out walking her dog and discovered yet another mutilated body hidden in the brush of Devil's Gate Reservoir. This marks the fifth such body found at that location since the remains of Edna Graves were discovered two weeks ago._

"_I took Kimmy out for her last walk of the day," said Ms. Munez, "and though we normally circle the block a couple of times before heading home, she just took off for the park. It was all I could do to hang on to the leash – she may be a mutt, but she's a big dog, you know. Anyway, I kept trying to get her to heel. Normally, she's the friendliest and most-obedient dog I've ever owned, but she just wouldn't listen and was barking and growling louder and louder the closer she pulled me to the park."_

_As the dog in question is indeed quite large, later Ms. Munez revealed that it is part Saint Bernard, and Ms. Munez is of a rather petite stature, it is very easy to see how the forty-six year old woman could be pulled along by her pet._

"_When we got to the park, Kimmy headed straight for a clump of scrub-brush. I had no idea what she was after, she'd never acted this way before; and I don't really follow the news all that much so I didn't know about the bodies that have been found there. At the time I thought she might have scented a coyote or something."_

_The body discovered by Ms. Munez and her pet has yet to be identified, but Los Angeles County Coroner, Dan Gabriel, did confirm that the individual had not been dead very long when found, "Without checking further, I'd say the time-of-death was probably no more than an hour before the dog found it. Likely less, but this is just based solely on how fresh the remains seem."_

_When asked if he could clarify that statement or offer a possible explanation as to the cause of death, Coroner Gabriel declined, citing the need for further investigation. When asked if this most current body matched the state of the previous four located at Devil's Gate Reservoir, he further declined comment, though he did admit that state officials "have expressed concern regarding [the incidents] and have the full cooperation of all local offices."_

Bill drained half of his mug of lukewarm coffee before answering his wife. "The local cops are convinced it's a pack of feral dogs, but according to the coroner, the bite-patterns on the remains are 'inconsistent with any known canine'. The LA County sheriff's department has called in California Fish and Game to look into what it might be, but the deputy I spoke with said that the Fish and Game people probably wouldn't be able to look into it for at least another week or two – they're all tied up in the Cascades, looking for that rabid cougar that was in the news a few days ago." Seeing Ellen about to ask something, he held up his hand in a 'stop right there' motion. "And, yes, before you ask, we've already confirmed that the cougar is exactly that. Joshua called last night – he's taking the kid out to Wyoming to work on his tracking – and said one of the hikers caught it on tape, and it's no sort of were or demon, just a cat with some horribly bad luck."

"You taking anyone with you on this?" Ellen asked, changing her question when Bill answered the first one without her even having to ask.

Bill could tell from her tone of voice that it wasn't a question, more a wifely demand. He shrugged. "It'd be nice, but like I said, Joshua is showing the kid how to hunt jackalopes out in Wyoming."

Ellen snorted in amusement. "I know you and Joshua go way back, honey, but he's not the only other hunter out there, you know."

Bill could further tell from her tone that she had someone in particular in mind, but he wasn't exactly sure who it might be. "I know," he agreed, "but Pastor Jim's stuck overseeing the remodeling at his church and Preacher's visiting relatives up in Alaska. No one's heard from Elkins for going on five years now, and I know you know what _that_ probably means."

Ellen's light smile at her husband's state of obliviousness broadened slightly. Teasingly, she said, "I'm thinking of a name, Billy-boy, and it starts with an 'L'."

Bill wrinkled his forehead and tried to match up any of the hunters he knew with the initial. After half a minute, he blinked at Ellen and asked, "_Who_?"

"Lives in South Dakota?" Ellen clarified. "Rather over-polite whenever he's here? English accent? Single-handedly broke up that fight between Kubrick and Carl last summer? Any of this ringing any bells there, hon?"

_Now she starts to make sense. _Bill rolled his eyes. "There's a reason I didn't mention Lupin, Singer, or Winchester. All three of them look after those kids of theirs – hell, to be honest, I'm not real clear on which kid belongs to what adult in that crew – and none of them are all that known for working with someone outside their little clique." _Besides_, he mentally continued, _I've only met the man twice. Always happens that he shows up at the Roadhouse when I'm not there. If I were a more suspicious sorta guy, I'd be worried – but I know I got nothing to worry about. If Ellen and me stuck together through all that shit in '77, I don't think Mr. Education stands a chance, and that's even if he's interested…which I kinda doubt. He strikes me as the kind of guy that bats for the other team._

Ellen finished her own coffee and placed the empty mug in the sink. "And who's bothered _asking_ them to help? I mean, if any one of them needs a hand on a job, they don't have to go too awful far for assistance, now do they? But how many other hunters have bothered asking any of the three to help out?"

Bill did a passing impression of a guppy before he was forced to admit that Ellen had a point. "Huh. Never really thought about it like that before." He hadn't. "Suppose it can't hurt to give them a call."

"Worst they could do is say no," Ellen agreed, heading out of the room to see about getting her cranky daughter up for the day.

Bill scanned the bulletin-board hung on the kitchen wall next to the phone for the slip of paper that had the number on it for Singer Salvage. It rang three times before a gruff voice answered, "Singer Salvage, Singer here."

"Hey, Bobby. It's Bill Harvelle."

"Hey, Bill. How's things? It as quiet down your way as it's been up here?"

"Jo's got the chicken pox, and up 'til this morning, yeah, it's been real quiet," Bill replied.

"'Up 'til this morning'?" Bobby asked. "Whacha catch wind of?"

"Don't know yet. Did some quick legwork, and I'm pretty sure it's some sort of creature. Joshua's out training that kid he took in, so I can't reach him. How are you with critters, Singer?"

Bobby chuckled, the sound full of gravel. "Not all that great, Bill. Not really my area of expertise. You said Joshua's unavailable?" Bill made an affirmative grunt. "Then if you want my opinion, you'll wanna take Remus with you – he's probably one of the best trackers I've ever met."

"Better than Joshua?" skepticism laced Bill's question.

"I don't know if 'better' is the right word; I'd say they're probably dead-even, though. Hell, if the two of them ever decide to work together, I'm sure they'd figure out how to track a flea through a zoo."

Bill laughed outright at that. "I'll take your word for it, old man."

"Watch who you're callin' _old_ there, boy. I'm only five years older than you."

"Yeah, but my age still starts with a 'three'."

"In the words of Dean, 'eat my shorts' there, Billy-boy."

"You let the kids watch _The Simpsons_?"

"Why not?" Bill could practically see Bobby shrug over the phone line. "Just a cartoon. Ain't none of my business anyway. John's the one who says what the kids can watch on TV." Bobby cleared his throat and redirected the conversation back to its original topic. "You wanna talk to Remus?"

"Sure," Bill replied. "Go ahead and put him on."

"Just a minute," Bobby replied, followed by the sound of the phone receiver being sat down on something. Faintly, he could hear Bobby ask one of the kids to run and get Lupin.

Two or three minutes later, the phone was picked up again. "Hello, Bill, are you still there?" Lupin's well-cultured voice said.

"Yeah, I'm still here."

"Bobby said you might want some help on a hunt?"

Though he'd only met Lupin twice, the directness of the query remained consistent with his prior interactions with the man. "Yeah, could do. Got a line on what's probably some sort of creature out in the LA area. I could use a hand in tracking the sucker, if you're interested."

Remus let out a small laugh, and Bill reflected that even the man's _laughter_ somehow sounded more intelligent than most people's. "I think we probably stumbled on the same article, Bill. The thing out at Devil's Gate, yeah?"

"That's the one," Bill confirmed. "I called the sheriff's department out that way and found out that the vic's bodies all have the same weird bite-pattern. They've called Fish and Game, but aren't expecting any assistance on that front until that cougar in the Cascades is tagged and bagged."

"Any real details?"

"Only that the patterns aren't consistent with dogs or coyotes. Couldn't find out what made them different, though."

Remus made a 'hmm' noise. "Not much better than my own research. You said you called down that way?"

"Sure did. Said I was a reporter with the _Chicago Tribune_."

"That's probably why they weren't too forthcoming with the details. I've yet to meet anyone in law enforcement who views the press as anything but vermin akin to mosquitoes."

"Yeah, blood-sucking little irritations about covers my view of the press, too. Doesn't mean they don't have their uses. Anyway, Ellen's insisting I run with some backup on this, so you interested?"

"Not an issue. When can we expect you?"

"Say…four hours or so. That should gimme enough time to get my shit together and drive out that way. Oh, before I forget, do you know if Bobby's got a distributor cap that'll fit a '79 El Camino? One of the barflies has been looking for one and promised me a ten-dollar finder's fee if I came through."

"Honestly? I have absolutely no idea. I'll ask him for you, though. See you at noon, then?"

"Or thereabouts. See ya in a bit." Bill hung up the phone and quickly gathered his notes into an old leather messenger bag he'd had for years. He double-checked to make sure he had numerous spare pens and at least one empty legal pad before heading upstairs. He paused by the open door to Jo's bedroom to see his wife daubing pink calamine on the innumerable little spots that were in the process of making the five year-old miserable.

"Daddy, I _itch_. The pink stuff don't help," Jo whined as soon as Bill showed in the doorway.

"Sorry, catling, there ain't a whole lot I can do about it. You just make sure not to scratch, and you'll start feelin' better soon. Promise."

Somewhat mollified, the five year-old quit squirming as her mother added more lotion to her skin.

Ellen glanced up, "Well?"

"I've got backup. Happy?"

The corners of Ellen's mouth pulled back in a tight smile. "Be happier when you get back."

"I know. I'm gonna head out, soon as I get my shit together. Call you when we get to LA, okay?"

"Whatever."

Bill sighed internally. He knew how much Ellen hated that she had to stay behind with Jo. _Come on, hon, don't be that way. Only another year or two, and I'll take a turn to stay with the munchkin while you run up the mileage on the Dodge._ He crossed the room and captured his wife's chin with his hand. He tilted her face up to look at him and gave her a quick kiss. "Hey, how about you, me, and munchie here head over to Kansas City once she's back to her usual self? Take a week and visit Worlds of Fun and get sunburned and sick on cotton candy and vendor-dogs."

"The Roadhouse?"

He gave a nonchalant little shrug, "I'll figure something out by then. Preacher's honest enough and should be back from Alaska by then. Would likely run the place for us in exchange for that antique rifle I can't find parts for."

Ellen's expression morphed into a true smile. "God knows she's offered to buy the damn thing often enough."

"That she has." Bill gave her one last kiss before ruffling his daughter's hair. "You be good for Mom, kiddo, and if you are, I'll bring you back a present."

"Promise?" the girl's eyes lit up at the mention of presents.

"Promise. Just remember not to scratch, no matter how much it itches. Deal?"

She grinned, "Deal."

* * *

**A/N2: **I know from additional resources (the computer-based bonus features on the S2 DVD of SPN, specifically Jo's blog) that I fudged the timeframe for the hunt which killed Bill Harvelle in Show, but I don't particularly care all that much – the only canon I tend to follow is what's available in the actual episodes of Show and what was published in the Harry Potter books (ignoring those _freaking_ horcruxes). According to SPN ep 2.06 (_No Exit_), Jo says, 'I was still in pigtails when my dad died,' and I take this to mean anytime from age four through twelve…just to let y'all know, of course.

This tale is complete and will run nine chapters. I will update every two or three days.

Thanks for reading and remember to let me know what you think!

**Edit 9/18/09:** caught and corrected a typo.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by Eric Kripke; various production elements including, but not limited to, Warner Brothers and the CW network. No money is being made from this intellectual exercise and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** There are a couple of instances of Latin used in this chapter, but since I seem to have misplaced my Latin grammar book, I have no idea if I conjugated the sentences correctly. If you know more Latin than I do, please let me know if it's totally mangled from what I meant to say, and I'll fix the chapter. All instances of Latin are noted with translations at the end of the chapter.

* * *

**Ripple Effect**

_Tuesday, May 1, 1990  
Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

Remus hung up the phone and ran a hand through his hair. _Hmm…getting shaggy there, Moony. A haircut will have to wait, though. Whatever's killing people in California takes precedence over your vanity, such that it is._ He turned his mind to making a quick list of what he wanted to take with him. Snagging a pen from the junk-drawer and using the back of a grocery receipt, he quickly scribbled down several book titles – there were nine in total – and looked up. The only other person in the kitchen was Sam, still gnawing his way through the last of the breakfast toast while reading from his history text. "Sammy?"

"Uncle Moony?" The soon-to-be seven year-old mimicked Remus' tone precisely.

"Would you do me a favor?"

Sam slowly closed his book and leveled a look that would not have been out of place on someone three or four times his age; a look that said _what now?_ and _maaaybe_ and _what'll I get out of it if I do? _and a whole host of other myriad things that all boiled down to a wary kind of acceptance. "What?" was all he said out loud.

Remus wasn't sure if it was a good sign or a bad sign that all three of the boys had a tendency to act far older than they really were. Since he was uncertain, he decided to consider it a positive thing – after all, unlike nearly every other child he'd witnessed during his trips into the normal world, none of the three boys _ever_ acted up in public or threw a tantrum because they couldn't have something. He handed the receipt to Sam. "Could you get these out of the library for me?"

Sam scanned down the list and, though he never really noticed anything when busy with his book, some portion of the telephone call had seeped in. "Venatus?" (1)

Remus nodded, "Ita. Non ago scio ubi remam." (2)

A thoughtful look surfaced on Sam's face; again, Remus noticed that the expression was somewhat out of place under all those shaggy brown curls. "Quo?" he asked. (3)

"California."

Sam's expression finally melted into something suitable to a child his age – he pouted. "You're gonna miss my birthday."

Remus winced at the power of Sammy's 'kicked puppy' look; his hazel eyes now seemed far too wide for such a small face and took on a bright sheen that the werewolf knew from experience could run either to tears or to nothing at all. "I know," he replied sympathetically. "I'm really sorry about it, too."

Sammy shook his head. "No, you aren't. Just like Dad wasn't really upset that he missed Dean's birthday last year."

"That's not true," Remus cajoled.

One of Sam's eyebrows arched up in an unconscious imitation of Dean's favorite expression of incredulity. "Yeah, it _is_. Sure, Dad felt bad he hurt Dean's feelings, but he wasn't sorry he went."

Remus made a mental note to look into just where Sammy was getting his information. _Kids aren't _that_ perceptive, are they?_ Remus knelt next to Sam's chair and looked him in the eye at his level. "Tell you what, cub, since I'm going to miss out on all the fun, you save me a piece of cake and when I get back we'll head over to Pierre – just you and me – and go to Barnes and Noble. How does that sound?"

Sammy brightened so much that for an instant it seemed like someone had lit a _lumos_ behind the kid's eyes. "Really?"

Remus nodded, "Absolutely."

Sam scrambled off the chair, the remains of his breakfast forgotten next to his history book, and nearly knocked Remus completely over as he scurried for the library with the list of books in his hands.

As he climbed back to his feet, a sudden realization descended on him. He blinked blankly for a few moments, turning the thought over and over in his mind. The only conclusion he came to was, _So this is how a chess-piece feels. _He chuckled at his own gullibility before heading up to his room.

Remus' old backpack, which had served so faithfully since his last year of Hogwarts, had finally given up the ghost a few months earlier. He wasn't too sure he much cared for the replacement that Dean had scrounged up for him – a rather archaic leather valise – because he couldn't sling it over his shoulder like he was used to, but it did hold more than the backpack had. It was also relatively watertight. But still…his backpack had seen him through some hard traveling, and later served quite admirably for both his and Harry's possessions before they'd settled at Singer's. He wouldn't go so far as to say it was like a missing limb, but it came pretty damn close.

He quickly had a couple of pairs of jeans and some t-shirts packed, along with several pairs of socks (after a particularly messy hunt with Bobby down in the muck of the Louisiana swamps, he rapidly came to the conclusion that clean socks were the next best thing to heaven and had taken to packing far more than a normal person would anytime he had to be gone overnight) and so on. The next things he added to the valise included his toothbrush, comb, and other toiletries all zipped up in a plastic baggie. After the necessities for daily life had been added, he retrieved three wooden boxes from the bottom drawer of his dresser. The first and largest measured roughly the same size as a thick hardback novel and contained his personal version of a first-aid kit, with Peperup in place of Nyquil, Skele-Grow in place of splints, and other miscellaneous potions and salves. The second box was the smallest, about an inch or so deeper than an average paperback, and held his collection of identifications (after seeing the hassle John and Bobby went through to photocopy realistic IDs into existence, Remus had taken to transfiguring them instead). The final box held the one item he really didn't care much for owning, but after discovering that certain species of magical creatures native to North America were inherently immune to external magic, he put up with it. The item in question was a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. A big part of why he disliked the gun had to do with the fact that Bobby insisted he carry both iron and silver ammunition. He kept latex gloves in the box to handle the silver bullets.

Remus had just finished packing the last of the things he felt would come in handy, like a notebook, when Sam arrived carrying the stack of books he'd requested. Luckily, most of the books weren't all that thick, otherwise the pile would have been taller than Sam. As it stood, the boy was having trouble seeing over them. "Thanks, Sammy," Remus said, taking the books from the youngest of his 'cubs'.

"When you leavin'?" the boy asked.

"In a couple of hours. I'll be hunting with Bill Harvelle this time."

"Jo's daddy?"

Remus nodded. "The same."

Sammy echoed Remus' nod. "He seems like a good guy, but I don't like Jo much. Want me to tell Dean'n'Harry you're leavin'?"

"Thanks for offering, cub, but I can do it myself. Bill won't get here for another few hours yet."

"Okay," the boy chirped. "D'ya need any help packin'?"

Remus shook his head. "Nope. All I have left to pack were the books you brought me." He began fitting them into the remaining empty space in his valise. "You all ready for your end-of-the-year assessment tests?"

"Think so," Sam replied. "They're at the end of the month, though, so I still have _ages_ to finish studying."

"The time will pass quicker than you think, cub," Remus warned. "Best stay on top of things."

"I _do_. But Dean says that as long as he remembers it for the test, it doesn't matter _when_ he studies for it."

Remus wedged the last book into the bag and zipped it shut before looking over at Sam. "And how well does Dean do on the tests?"

Sam shrugged, "He passes them all, I know that, but he never lets me'n'Harry see his scores."

"That's because he usually just _barely_ passes the subjects he doesn't much like," Remus explained as he checked his pockets. His wallet was in its proper place, as was his wand, but the good-luck pouch the boys had given him for Christmas wasn't where it was supposed to be. _Where did I put that thing again?_ "He does very well in science and arithmetic, but he could definitely use some improvement in history and English."

"But those are so _easy_!"

Remus chuckled, "Not for Dean, they aren't. It's like you and algebra or Harry and languages. You each are just naturally good at different things. It's the areas you don't like and aren't naturally good at that you need to spend more time in studying." Remus picked up his valise and stood in the middle of his room, making one last check that he had everything he wanted with him.

"Forget somethin'?" Sam asked.

Remus sighed. "Always feel like I'm forgetting something whenever I get ready for a hunt. You haven't seen that luck-pouch you boys gave me last Christmas, have you?"

Sammy brightened and grinned, "It's in your jacket pocket, where you put it last week."

"Thanks," Remus replied. "How about we see if we can't find Harry and Dean, hmm?"

"I think they're out back with Uncle Bobby," Sam said, leading the way down the short hall to the stairwell that was tucked between the main house and the addition.

"And where's your dad?"

"He went in to town. Said that Miss Penny would give him a hundred bucks to fix her porch roof for her and patch the leak in her water heater."

Remus valiantly refrained from either snorting or rolling his eyes, though he couldn't stop the thought, _I'm sure that's not _all_ he's 'fixing' over at Penny's._ Penny Fairchild was a thirty-three year-old divorcée with a ten year-old daughter. Both Penny and her girl shared the same honey-blonde hair and sky blue eyes, though the daughter, in Remus' opinion, was far too spoiled a brat to have such a friendly mother. He supposed it had something to do with the girl's father, but he couldn't confirm that as he'd never met the man.

On arriving in the living room, Remus grabbed his light denim jacket from the hooks by the front door and quickly checked the pockets. Sam had been correct – his luck-pouch was right where the boy had said it would be. He shrugged into the jacket and reached for the door. One last glance revealed that Sam had headed back to the kitchen; he was just visible through the doorway. "Don't forget – you promised the bookstore when you get back!"

"I won't forget, cub," Remus replied.

He stepped out onto the shaded porch. Sitting his bag on one of the battered and rusty metal deck chairs, Remus headed around the house to the back yard. Bobby had a minivan pulled up on the slab of cement that marked the boundary between the yard and the ever-growing piles of rust that covered the rest of the small acreage. From where he stood – the outside corner of the library – he could see the distinctive shapes of Bobby's size twelve boots sticking out from under the rear end of the van. On the other side of the jack was another pair of boots, identical to Bobby's in all but size. The question as to which remaining cub it was became clear when Dean's voice echoed through the mounds and piles of cars, "Found one!"

Remus didn't have long to wait to discover just what it was that Dean had found among the slowly-dissolving car carcasses. The eleven year-old appeared relatively quickly, directing a floating exhaust pipe and muffler with his wand.

"Hey, Uncle Moony," Dean said, directing the muffler and pipe to a spot near the van Bobby was working on. "You need somethin'?"

Remus nodded, "I'm going to be heading out shortly."

Dean perked up, "Really? Whacha goin' after?"

"Don't know, cub."

A smirk showed up on Dean's face, "I could help, you know. I haven't missed a shot since Dad started showing me how to shoot."

"No, Dean," Remus replied, his voice stern. "You're still not old enough to come along, and you know it. So stop asking."

Dean's shoulders slumped and he rolled his eyes. "When, then? Huh? I mean, any time I talk about it, all you, Dad, and Uncle Bobby can say is 'not yet'."

"I honestly don't know, Dean. You'll need to take it up with your dad. If it helps, I promise I won't let Harry do any hunting until after you get the chance."

A loud, "No fair!" echoed out from under the van, followed by a metallic _clang_ and Bobby saying, "Damn it, Harry! Lil' warning before you blow out my ears next time!"

Remus chuckled softly before calling back to Harry, "Is too fair. What wouldn't be is if I let you do something before Dean, just like it'd be unfair to you to let Sammy do something before you."

"How long you gonna be gone?" Dean asked, digging out a little slip of paper from his pocket.

Remus shook his head. "I'm not sure. I hope no longer than a week, but it really depends on what this thing is."

"Where'll ya be?"

"California. Los Angeles."

Dean closed his eyes and Remus could hear him muttering to himself even though he couldn't make out the words. "That's…fourteen hundred, ninety miles. Take you about twenty-two hours on the interstates, maybe longer depending on what time of day you wind up goin' though the cities."

Dean's capacity for applied mathematics – not to mention his visual memory acuity – never failed to amaze Remus. _What other eleven year-old could figure that up without a map, ruler, and calculator handy? Then again, what other eleven year-old has spent literally hundreds of hours memorizing the road maps we bring back from hunts. I just hope he eventually decides to do something else with his life. Hunting's no place for a walking calculator like him._ Out loud, Remus asked, "Which cities?"

"Oh, uh…Salt Lake and Provo in Utah. Las Vegas. And then LA itself. Those are the biggest ones. It's about nine-hundred, sixty miles to Salt Lake. You'll pro'ly stop over there, right?"

"How much time is that?"

Dean's eyebrow crept up towards his hairline as though to say _You've _got_ to be kidding me_. "It's fourteen and a half hours, Moony. Distance divided by speed equals time." His tone clearly indicated that he felt that Remus should have been able to figure this on his own. He planted his open palm against his forehead. "Wait a sec, this is _you_. Dad-driving-speeds don't figure. Since _you'll_ be runnin' at the speed-limit, it'll take you about seventeen and a half hours."

"I don't know about that – I'm going to be with Bill Harvelle on this job. I assume, since he's swinging by here to pick me up, that he'll be doing most of the driving."

Dean blinked at Remus. The image that came to the werewolf's brain was of the old Commodore computer he had retired earlier that spring in favor of a system that ran on Windows 3.0; the old Commodore ran on BASIC, and if you hadn't programmed it to do something properly, it always came back with 'syntax error' on one line, followed by 'ready' on the next. Remus was almost positive that Dean was blinking at the same speed the old cursor did.

"In that case…" Dean sighed and threw up his hands. "I don't know! The distances don't change none – at least 'til we figure how to fold space – so you're gonna hafta figure the times on your own."

_Yes, that's Dean-speak for 'syntax error' or 'does not compute – insufficient data'._ Remus shook his head a little and smiled at his 'nephew'. "Don't worry about it, cub. Unless we trade off the driving, we'll probably take two or three days to get there." Changing the subject, he asked, "You're scrounging up parts for Bobby?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah. If we got the time later, we're gonna see what's makin' that clanking noise in your truck, too, but Uncle Bobby said that the payin' customers come first."

"If you get a couple of spare minutes before I get back, you think you could find something for me?"

"Sure. Whacha need?"

"Bill's got a friend looking for the…" Remus' mind refused to recall which part, exactly, Bill had mentioned needing. "Um…it's a hat, I think."

"A _cap_?" Dean offered.

"Yes, that's it."

"Oil cap? Gas cap?"

"No," Remus scrunched his forehead, trying to force the proper term to surface in his brain. "It began with a 'd', I believe."

"Oh," Dean smirked at Remus. "A _distributor_ cap?"

"That's it exactly!"

"For what car?"

For all that Remus usually had a pretty decent memory, cars held no fascination for him whatsoever and so most details pertaining to them had a tendency to flow in one ear and right out the other. He figured it had something to do with living with two mechanics and two cubs bent on following in their footsteps. Any time the four of them started in on cars, he and Sam usually disappeared to the library or out to the back yard or anywhere the car-talk wasn't ongoing and endless. "A seventy-nine something-or-other. One of those crossbred car-truck things, I think. When Bill gets here, you can double-check with him."

Dean took the crumpled scrap of paper he'd been holding on to and unearthed a tiny snub of a pencil from his other pocket. He crossed something out and scribbled something else down. "I'll do that," he said with a wry little grin on his face.

"You find that oil-pan yet?" Bobby called from under the van.

"Just gettin' on it now!" Dean flashed his sunny grin at Remus before disappearing back into the piles of junked cars.

"You two get all that?" Remus asked, closing the distance to the van.

"Yeah," Bobby replied. "This that article you tore off to the library with this morning?"

"The same," Remus agreed. "Bill saw the same article, and apparently Ellen doesn't want him running solo on this one. Wonder why he called me, though."

"That's easy," Bobby's voice said. With the signature squeak-squeal of the wheeled trolly-thing he used when working on the undersides of cars, the older man pulled himself out from under the van. Harry followed and emerged with rust-flakes in his hair, dust on his glasses, and a dark smear of grease across his cheek. "Joshua's still trainin' that kid he found and Preacher-girl's up in Alaska. He ain't all that close to most of the huntin' community, for all they run the Roadhouse. I reckon Ellen figured that the three of us would be less likely to run off and do somethin' stupid and get Bill killed."

"How's that?"

"The boys."

Remus had to admit, it made sense. "Ah."

"When you headin' out?"

"Bill said he'd be here around noon or so. Do you think John will be back by then?"

Bobby snorted and readjusted his ball cap. "No. I'll let him know where you went, though. You'll pro'ly wanna call when you two pull off to sleep."

Regardless of his earlier memory issues with the car part, Remus knew when an order was hidden by a polite request. "I'll call, even if we trade off on the driving, around nine or so. Say goodnight to the cubs." He reached down and brushed some of the rust-flakes out of Harry's hair. "What about you, Harry?"

"What about me what?"

"No questions?"

Harry shrugged and pushed his glasses further up on his nose. "Nope. I _have _ears, you know."

"Surprised you didn't go with John today."

"Wanted to, but Uncle John said maybe next time. Said he didn't want me on the roof with him."

Remus and Bobby exchanged a conspiratorial glance that clearly communicated that they both thought that John was doing a little more than _just_ fixing a roof over at Penny's place. A corner of Bobby's mouth twitched and Remus' smile morphed into a rather wolfish grin. "Maybe I'll give John a call before Bill gets here," he said. His inner Marauder was never all that far from the surface, and since John wouldn't actually _admit_ he and Penny had a 'thing'…

Bobby echoed Remus' mischief-filled grin with his own smirk. "Sounds like a good idea."

* * *

**A/N2: **Another point to keep in mind now that S4 of show is out on DVD and most folk who have had to wait to see it have managed the feat, I will _not _be having Adam as a character in this universe. According to SuperWiki, John was involved with Adam's mom in January of 1990. In this tale, that time has been spent in an on-again, off-again relationship of sorts with the off-screen Penny Fairchild (and please, _relax_, folks – nothing comes of this relationship but some good memories for John to linger over later in his life).

I also realize I've probably got the release of Windows 3.0 not _quite_ right, but please ignore any discrepancy – I'm going off of memories that are old enough to freakin' _vote_ here.

1. Hunting?

2. Yes. I don't know when I'll return.

3. Where?

Like I said before, I'm not sure if the Latin I'm using is conjugated properly – I can't locate my Latin book on grammar right now, just the dictionary, so I gave it my best shot. If any of you know a better way to Latinate the noted sentences, let me know, and I'll update the chapter.

This tale is complete and will run nine chapters. I will update every two or three days.

Thanks for reading and remember to let me know what you think!


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by Eric Kripke; various production elements including, but not limited to, Warner Brothers and the CW network. No money is being made from this intellectual exercise and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** This is mostly a getting-to-know-you kind of chapter, but don't worry - I've got some action lined up in the next chapter!

* * *

**Ripple Effect**

_Tuesday, May 1, 1990  
Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

Bill pulled to a stop in an empty place in Bobby's turn-about, behind an aging blue Ford truck (with the tailgate off a Chevy) that was more rust than paint and at an angle to Singer's tow-truck. An old Chevelle was barely visible parked around the side of the house. One of the boys was on the porch, looking intently at some sort of bug in a repurposed pickle jar, but no one else was visible. Bill climbed out of his Dodge and headed towards the porch. "Kid, your folks home?" he said once he was close enough not to have to shout.

The kid nodded, his shaggy brown hair flopping into his eyes. "Yeah, but Dad's gone to Miss Penny's 'til later. Uncle Bobby and Harry and Dean are 'round back workin' on a van, an' Uncle Moony's doin' _another_ check to make sure he's got everythin' he thinks he'll need."

"Thanks, kid. You think you can go get Remus for me? I'm Bill, by the way."

The kid looked up from the jar and Bill realized it wasn't just _any_ bug the kid was messing around with – it was a freakin' _spider_, one of those massive black-and-yellow monsters that used freakin' _twine_ and _rope_ to make their webs. "I'm Sam," the kid said, grinning at him. "And this is Sheba – she's an _Arigope aurantia_, locally known as a corn spider." Bill involuntarily took a step backwards when Sam lifted the jar containing the spider up and held it out to him. Sam could tell that Bill didn't like spiders from the man's expression, and, in the way of all kids who've found a weakness they can exploit in an adult, immediately set about pressing the issue. "Uncle Remus'll be out soon," Sam made the comment quickly before barreling on to more important things. "Did you know that corn spiders are members of the family of orb-weavers? They are more fadis- fastid- fasc- More _cleanly_ than other orb-weavers, though. When I'm done working on the report Uncle Moony wants as homework, I'll turn her loose back in the junkyard where I found her. She'll rebuild her web an' this fall she'll make as many as four egg-sacks that'll have nearly a thousand eggs in each of them. Next spring, the babies will hatch, and most'll use their silk to go other places on the wind, but some'll stick around."

Sam was highly amused at the strange, pale colors Bill's face turned as he described what he knew about the black-and-yellow garden spider. Unfortunately, Remus showed up before Sam had a chance to go into the spider's diet. "I think that's enough, cub," Remus said, chuckling lightly as he stepped out onto the porch. "I get the feeling Bill doesn't much care for spiders."

Sam grinned at Remus and picked up his notebook and the pickle jar. "The book store when you get back, right?"

"I promised, didn't I?" Remus replied, ruffling the mop of brown masquerading as Sam's hair. "You make sure you finish up your homework, and see if you can't get your brother to study some more, will you?"

Sam rolled his eyes, "Is mos non audio mihi. Ego mos animadverto vos ut vos reverto." He took his spider and his notebook into the house, the screen door banging shut behind him. (1)

Remus sighed a little and grabbed his denim jacket and his valise off one of the battered deck-chairs. "Sorry about that. He's usually not quite so…"

Bill just shook his head, "No, don't worry about it. I can remember doing the same damn thing to my mom, only it was a garter snake and I was nine at the time." Bill blinked as he realized something. "Was that Latin he was using there at the end?"

Remus nodded. "Yes. We home-school the boys, and, by default, I wound up being the 'teacher'. Since I know it, I figured it couldn't hurt to make sure the boys know it, too. If they show an interest, I was planning on introducing them to French and German this year."

Bill made a 'shall we' gesture towards the car and shrugged. "Wouldn't know anything about that. I can muddle through Latin phonetically, but actually _speaking_ it, that's a whole other ball game. I used to know how to speak Spanish – and could probably still order a beer, if I had to – but that's about it as far as me and other languages go." The pair of hunters climbed into Bill's car and Bill paused before starting the engine. "Sorry I'm late, by the way. Took longer than I figured. Troopers had a speed-trap set in Brewster, so I had to go around." He fingered the keys for a moment before facing Remus. "Can I ask somethin'?"

"You can ask," Remus replied. "I can't guarantee an answer, but you can always ask."

"Just what _is_ the relationship you-all have?" Bill started the car and maneuvered it to point back towards the main road.

"Pardon?"

"I mean, you and Singer and Winchester and those kids. I never really got a clear explanation from Ellen, and I been wonderin'."

Remus chuckled. "Ah, yes. I could see how it might be a little confusing to an outsider. Firstly, the only blood-relations involved are John and his sons, Dean and Sam. Harry is the son of two of the best friends I've ever had in my life, and when they were killed, I wound up with custody."

"What killed them, if you don't mind my asking?" Bill said, turning the car onto the road that would eventually lead them to I-90 and points west.

"Actually," Remus replied, well-used to most hunters assuming that the deaths of Harry's parents were what introduced him to the life, "it wasn't a _what_, so much as a _who_. James, Harry's father, was in law enforcement, and was killed by a man he'd been trying to put in prison for a very long time. His wife, Lily, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time." It would have been alarming how easily the tale spewed forth had Remus not gone over this 'mugglized' version of events so many, _many_ times already. "There were rumors that the man who killed them was looking to finish the family off proper – Harry was only a year old at the time – and so I brought him to the US on the advice of an old friend of mine; she'd told me that this country was a good place to disappear because it's both geographically large and has a pretty impressive population mass."

"I s'pose I can see that." Bill glanced from the road to Remus and back. "So, how'd you get into hunting?"

"Within hours of landing in New York, I met Raven. It was probably a very good thing, as I had nearly _no _idea what I was doing. I had a passport and some cash and Harry with me, but I knew next to nothing about how to live in the US. She took me and Harry under her wing, so to speak, and after a month or two of riding with her, things started making sense. At least, I was beginning to understand how things worked in this country. One day, she mentioned needing to go see who I now know is Pastor Jim, but at the time was just 'a friend in Minnesota'. She left me with one of the people she knew – Missouri Mosely – to go help him, and Missouri's the one who actually explained all this to me." Remus pointedly refrained from mentioning the fact that it had been a full moon that weekend or anything at all about how he'd managed to ward Raven's camper against the nightmare that had been stalking her for years. Until he'd actually sat down with Missouri, he had been operating under the assumption that Raven had been a witch or squib – it didn't take long for Missouri to disabuse him of that 'foolish notion'. "How about you? How did you fall into," he made an all-encompassing gesture, "all this?"

Bill paid more attention to the road than to his companion, but by the time he finished, Remus could forgive the lack of eye-contact. "Ellen and me got married right out of high school. Contrary to what everyone believed at the time, she _wasn't_ pregnant – we just _knew_, you know?" Remus nodded – James and Lily had been a lot like that, once James quit acting like an arse. "Anyway," Bill continued, "that was back in '73. By the end of the next year, we were doing pretty good. Had a good-sized chunk of cash saved, new car, and our house was a wedding present from her parents. Ellen waited tables at the Roadhouse an' I was working construction at the time. Things were pretty damn good, so we figured it was about time to see about starting a family. Tony… He was born in April of '75."

Bill fell quiet for a moment, staring through the windshield. "Ellen's folks were like us – they married right out of school, too. Hell, I think Cora was only sixteen at the time, but that don't matter none. They were married for goin' on somethin' like forty-six or -seven years when Fred was killed durin' an accident. He and his buddies were out after whitetail; it was the one tradition Cora just plain couldn't talk Fred outta. Personally, I think it was an excuse to go off an' get drunk in the woods, but try tellin' that man that booze and guns don't mix…" Bill paused and took a breath. "Anyway, point is, they'd been together for forever when Fred passed." He glanced over at Remus and let a small, bittersweet smile surface at the other hunter's expression. "Yeah, they'd been told they'd never have kids. Ellen was more than just a little surprise for 'em. Cora was around forty when Ellen was born."

Remus chuckled, "I believe that's called a 'change-of-life' baby."

"One way to put it, I s'pose. Don't matter. Don't change nothin'. When Fred died – that was November of '76 – Cora went off the deep end. I don't blame her for that. Hell, if anything ever happens to my El, I'll pro'ly do likewise. She hung on for five months or so before taking too many sleeping pills with most of a bottle of red. That was back on April thirtieth of '77. Ellen still maintains that she waited that long just so she could see Tony's second birthday." Bill downshifted the Dodge as they rolled through Eagle Butte proper – the town's local cop was notorious for handing out speeding tickets.

"What happened?" Remus asked. What had started as merely polite interest had metastasized into a _need_ to know what came next in Bill's tale. Remus idly wondered if storytelling was always a skill Bill had possessed or if it was the result of co-owning the Roadhouse or if it was simply the result of the necessary level of BS that any hunter had to sling in order to do their job.

"Well…" Bill got the car back up to highway speed as they left town behind them. "El says she was getting dinner started, but her photo album was out when I got home, so I figure she was wallowing in memories. I can understand that. Mom died when I was a freshman in high school, so I know what it's like." Bill shook his head. "I shoulda stayed home. Haven't mistrusted my instincts _once_ since, but Ellen – she's all kinds of stubborn. She said she'd be fine and we still had bills to pay and groceries to buy and all that. She said she'd be fine. So I'd gone in to work.

"Like I said, she claimed she was makin' supper, but I guess it doesn't really matter what she was doin'. Bottom line is that Anthony was out in the back yard, playin' in the sandbox I'd built the previous summer. El wasn't paying attention, and I wasn't even _there_…"

Remus didn't want to press, but Bill trailed off just when his roaring curiosity was about to be satisfied. "Come on, you can't just leave it there."

Bill sighed. "Didn't know it at the time, but a will-o'-the-wisp had lured Tony out of the yard. We lived at the edge of town at the time – not as far out as you-all, but not right _in_ town either. The sheriff found Tony a few days later, caught in some branches in the creek that runs through the woods out on the north side of town… A couple of days after that, Joshua showed up in town. The questions he was askin'… Well, I'm sure you can imagine. It hit me'n'El as just plain weird. Took the better part of a week, and Ellen intimidating the hell outta Josh, before he explained what he was doin' in town. And that, as they say, is that."

After a good ten minutes of only marginally stilted silence, Remus asked, "What about the Roadhouse? I mean, you mentioned that Ellen had been working there, but how did the two of you come to own it? And how'd it come to be…well, to borrow the words of John, 'hunter-central'?"

Bill favored Remus with a quick glimpse of his normal, lop-sided smile. "Hell, that's mostly Joshua's doin'. The bar itself useta belong to my folks. When Pop retired to Phoenix back in '80, he handed me the deed and told me to 'sell it or burn it for the insurance' and split the take with 'im." He let out a small laugh. "Think I disappointed the old man when I decided to keep the place. But it was mostly Josh who talked me into it and who put out the word that we're hunter-friendly."

"I could see Joshua doing that. As far as I know, there aren't a whole lot of places that are hunter-friendly. There's the Roadhouse, of course, and the junkyard, and I seem to recall a charter-boat service down in Florida, but that's about it."

Bill shrugged, "There's also a little motel in Savannah, Georgia. The woman who owns it isn't a hunter, but she's been helped out of a couple of different sticky situations. If you need a place to crash down there, look for the Rider's Lament and tell whoever's mannin' the desk that Dan sent you. You'll get half-price on rates for up to a week and at least one free meal from the owner. Seem to recall her name's Alice? Alicia? A-something, I know that."

The conversation then turned towards hunts the men had gone on in the past, peppered with some amusing anecdotes regarding the children. About the same time they merged onto I-90, Bill asked, "So…you-all are teachin' the boys about what's really out there? I mean, you sure that's a good idea?"

Remus shrugged, "You teach Jo to stay away from strangers, don't you? It's the same thing – the only real difference is a minor matter of degree. If they know what's out there, and how to defend against it, then they're going to be that much safer when they finally are old enough to be on their own."

"I s'pose I can see that, but I don't think me and Ellen are gonna go that route with Jo. You can call us superstitious if you want, but it's bad enough that she's got the same damn birthday that Tony did… I don't want to tempt fate any more than we already have." Bill checked his blind spot and pulled into the passing lane to get around an archaic Winnebago that belched black smoke out its tailpipe.

"Here's something to think about, Bill – of all the hunts you've ever been on, of all the hunts you've heard other hunters talk about, how many times has ignorance actually been bliss for the people involved?" Remus picked idly at a loose thread on the seam of his jeans, watching his companion out of the corner of his eye.

Bill's forehead furrowed, seriously thinking over what Remus had said. A few miles after leaving the Winnebago to labor its way into the Rockies on its lonesome, Bill pushed the thought to the back of his mind to bring up to Ellen later, preferably when she was in a good mood and feeling agreeable. "What about when they _are_ older," he asked, "and they decide they want to hunt, too?"

"Dean's already asking when he can come along," Remus laughed. "But seriously, I don't know for sure when John's going to let Dean try his hand at it, but if he doesn't let the kid at least _try_ and help sometime soon, I'm sure he'll rope Harry and Sammy into their own job."

Bill quirked an eyebrow at Remus. "Really?"

"Absolutely. If I've learned one thing in the last seven years, it's to _never_ underestimate just what those boys are capable of when they work together."

"It can't be that bad." Skepticism almost literally rolled off of Bill.

"I suppose it _could_ be worse," Remus allowed, then waited.

"Okay, I'll bite. Just how could it be worse?"

"They could've been girls," Remus replied.

Bill snorted out a hearty laugh. "Yeah, I'm really not lookin' forward to Joanna startin' middle school. I mean, I can remember being twelve and thirteen and just startin' to notice girls – hell, I don't wanna even _think_ about her in high school. Or worse, _college_." He shivered melodramatically. "Damn, gimme somethin' else to think about, quick. I'm startin' to feel old here."

"Always happy to oblige," Remus replied, pulling a dusty road atlas off the dashboard. "Where are we, exactly?"

"We just crossed into Wyoming. That little cluster of houses back there was Beulah. In ten minutes or so, we'll hit Gillette. I'll need to fill up there."

"Where were you planning on stopping for the night? Or did you want to drive straight through?"

"Don't think I'd be able to drive straight through. Figured we'd stop either in Rock Springs or pull off when my eyes start to cross, whichever comes first."

Remus managed to refrain from either rolling his eyes or from swatting Bill. "I _can_ drive, you know. I wasn't suggesting you do it all yourself."

"Good," Bill smirked, seemingly totally focused on the road ahead. "Then you can take over after we get gas."

_Is this going to be a running theme for the week?_ Remus pondered, _I mean…First Sam, now Bill? What is this, pick-on-Remus-day?_ He didn't say anything to let on that he was almost positive Bill had tried to manipulate him. "Not a problem," he replied. Silently, he added, _You'd better watch it, Bill. I'm fully aware that I don't look the part, but I was a Marauder, my good man, and most of the pranks we pulled were _my_ ideas._

* * *

**A/N2: **Hope y'all are liking this latest bit of imaginative wanderings from my brain - I know I had a helluva good time writing this.

1. He won't listen to me. See you when you get back.

I'm not sure if the Latin I'm using is conjugated properly – see note on previous chapter.

For the curious, Bill's 'Dodge' can be seen here:

http (colon, slash, slash) upload (dot) wikimedia (dot) org (slash) wikipedia (slash) commons (slash) 7 (slash) 71 (slash) Dodge-Dart-Swinger (dot) jpg

If you can't get the link to work (doing as normal for ffnet's weirdo limitations), just do a Google image search for '1974 Dodge Dart Swinger'. Bill's is, of course, lacking a supercharger (the air-intake manifold on the hood of a lot of sports cars).

This tale is complete and will run nine chapters. I will update every two or three days.

Thanks for reading and remember to let me know what you think!


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by Eric Kripke; various production elements including, but not limited to, Warner Brothers and the CW network. No money is being made from this intellectual exercise and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** Here's the next installment for you!

* * *

**Ripple Effect**

_Wednesday, May 2, 1990  
Altadena, California_

Bill and Remus traded off on driving, and even with spending roughly three hours or so getting gas or eating at various roadside diners, with the help of Bill's radar-detector and CB radio, the pair managed to average roughly ninety miles per hour; which had them pulling into the Los Angeles area at approximately eight in the morning. Bill drove through the morning rush, cussing at the idiocy of the other drivers on the road until he was in dire need of a throat lozenge. They managed to find the community of Altadena without too much difficulty. The motel that Bill pulled into had advertised _hourly_ rates and Remus made a mental note to be sure to scourgify the bedsheets before stretching out for some sleep; _I'll even offer Bill first crack at the shower._

Bill handed over a key on a dark blue, star-shaped plastic fob that had the motel's name, _Meteorite Inn_, printed in fading gold lettering. Harvelle muttered a constant stream of something about price-gouging on their way from the parking lot to their room, but Remus paid it no mind.

Their room was on the fifth floor and was surprisingly large – it even boasted an honest-to-god _kitchen_ area, not just a kitchenette. The room was also much cleaner than Remus had expected; it was old, no doubt about that, but there weren't any mystery stains on the walls, floors, ceiling, or bedding. The décor had Remus thinking that the inn had probably been built during the twenties or thirties – it had a definite 'art-deco' feel going for it.

Bill tossed his duffle and the satchel he carried paperwork in onto the bed closest to the bathroom. "Don't know about you, but I aim to get a little shut-eye before we start workin'. Need to call Ellen and Jo, though, so if you want it, the bathroom's all yours."

Remus covered a jaw-cracking yawn with one hand as he echoed Bill's actions in tossing his valise onto the foot of the other bed. "No, I'll grab a shower after I wake up. Sleep sounds like a good idea."

The werewolf was snoring softly before Bill could finish dialing, though his dreams were filled with more strangeness than usual.

_

* * *

Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

As the pickup jounced over the rutted drive connecting Singer Salvage to the main road into town, a wide variety of assorted sounds trumpeted the truck's presence. A low rumbly noise underscored a repetitive clicking sound while being punctuated by random clunking noises and a couple of high-pitched squeals. Among the dust kicked up by the truck's tires, thick blue-black smoke rolled out of the tailpipe, lacing the cab of the truck with a nauseating acrid stench that didn't combine very well with the sickly sweet stench that Caleb and Joshua had first noticed just after filling the truck a few minutes earlier.

"Come on, you son of a bitching truck, just another mile and then you can fall apart on me," Joshua muttered, fighting the steering wheel to keep the truck rolling on the drive and not in the ditch. He hit another unavoidable pothole and the truck bounced several times, not unlike how someone would bounce when flopping on a bed with loose springs. The dirty white two-story farmhouse came into view just as the truck's engine started making a loud, alarming rattle. "Just a little further, bitch," Joshua said to the steering wheel.

The collection of noises coming from the truck had John, Harry, Sam, Dean, and Bobby out on the porch.

Joshua hit the brakes, which let out a high-pitched squeal that ceased abruptly as the pedal sank mushily to the floorboards. The truck slewed roughly to the right, heading straight for John's parked Impala. Joshua let out a string of syllables that Caleb was pretty sure were Greek as he twisted the steering wheel to the left and pressed the clutch while yanking the gear-shift into neutral. Another stench invaded the cab, this time it smelled rather like burning plastic or resin, and the transmission let out a metallic screech of gears, followed by a loud snapping sound. The gear-shift stick came loose in Joshua's hand.

"That can't be good," Caleb shouted over the noise of the truck.

"Not now!" Joshua hollered back, twisting the steering wheel again. Luckily, by now the truck was only going a couple of miles an hour and the hard turn managed to both cause the truck to narrowly avoid both John's Impala and Bobby's tow-truck and come to a halt with its front bumper mere inches from the porch stairs.

Joshua let out a shaky breath and twisted the key to the 'off' position just as the thick stench of burning electrical insulation wafted out of the vents. In the sudden silence of mechanical noise, a high-pitched chittering came out of the engine compartment. Joshua exchanged a quick glance with Caleb before both hunters bolted from the cab of the truck – Caleb climbed out through the open window of his door, much to the amusement of those watching from the porch.

"Problems, Joshua?" Bobby asked.

The other hunter leveled a dark glare at Bobby and growled, "Shut it, Singer." He returned his attention to the pickup as Caleb scrambled to join the others on the porch. Joshua reached under his blue-and-black checkered flannel button-down and retrieved his gun from his waistband. The gun was extraordinarily _massive_ for a handgun – Caleb liked to call it 'Josh's Dirty Harry Hand Cannon' – and clued John and Bobby in on the fact that more was wrong than simply Joshua's perpetually-in-need-of-repair Chevy.

"What happened?" John asked, opening the screen door and grabbing the shotgun kept by the front door.

"Think it's a god-damned _gremlin_. Damn truck was fine 'til we stopped off in Lantry to fill up," Joshua replied, cautiously approaching the truck. His cowboy boots scuffed little puffs of dust into the air with each step. "Woulda waited 'til we got to Eagle Butte, but the damn thing was runnin' on fumes. Woulda had ta push it into the station."

"You mean all that crap started over the last _three miles_?" John raised the shotgun and aimed it towards the truck's engine compartment.

Joshua nodded grimly and warily reached through the still-open driver's door to pull the hood-release. "All except the shocks. Been meanin' to replace _them_ since Albuquerque."

Bobby let out a chuckle and said, "Don't ever change, Joshua." To the kids, he said, "You three run inside. You can watch from the windows if you want to, but a gremlin's nothin' to mess around with. Caleb, there's another couple of shotguns all set with iron shot on the rack in the living room."

The boys scrambled inside and Caleb quickly retrieved the two shotguns. He handed one to Bobby and kept the second for himself. Both of them fell into cover-positions while Joshua released the catch on the hood of the truck and lifted it. Something only slightly larger than a small housecat and a dull green-brown shot out of the truck's engine compartment before the hood could be fully lifted into place. The damn thing was _quick_, and managed to leave three parallel gashes on Joshua's cheek on its way by. Joshua let out a blistering string of curses and wiped the side of his face, letting the hood slam shut once again.

John had been expecting something along those lines and managed to get a shot off. It didn't hit the gremlin, but it did make it change direction and head for Remus' pickup instead of the Impala.

Bobby, Joshua, John, and Caleb slowly approached Remus' rust-blue Ford. A disturbing giggle sounded from underneath the truck, followed by a loud clang. John stooped over to check and found his assumptions borne out – the thing had just removed all the nuts and bolts holding the transmission into place.

Inside the house, Dean turned to Sam and said, "Gremlins, Sammy."

Sam closed his eyes and started rattling off facts as fast as he could, "Like to tear machines apart, especially if they're bein' used. Can be killed by iron, silver, or gettin' hurt by a cat. They're really _really _fast an' can kill a grown-up if they're mad enough. The claws on their feet are strong'n'sharp enough to shred steel, and they've got hands with fingers like us, only with three fingers, and are s'posed to be able to see in the dark –"

Dean held up a hand, "Enough. Don't need a biology report, Sammy, this ain't bein' graded." He faced Harry. "You're _real_ close. Think you can figure it out in the next five minutes?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know. I'll try. But what if I get stuck? I mean, Moony isn't here to help if something goes wrong."

Dean grinned, "I can do it, too, you know. Had Uncle Remus show me after you got stuck with that tail."

Harry rolled his eyes, "Thought you promised never to talk about that again."

"Complain later," Dean replied. "Sammy, you keep us updated as to what's happenin' outside. Harry, you get crackin' on that." Dean didn't linger to see his orders carried out, instead he bolted for their bedroom and snagged his and Harry's wands off the dresser. He also paused by the kitchen and got the snub-nosed .38 revolver from its hidey-hole between the microwave and the wall. He opened the cylinder as he hurried back to the living room and confirmed the gun was still loaded with silver rounds.

_

* * *

Altadena, California_

Remus' eyes snapped open of their own accord. His wristwatch confirmed that he'd only been sleeping for two or three hours at the most. He stretched and winced as a series of snaps and pops sounded from his spine. _Must be getting old._ Scrubbing a hand across his face and wiping the sleep-sand from the corners of his eyes, he tried to figure out what had caused him to wake up. It wasn't Bill. The other hunter didn't talk in his sleep or snore or even _move_ all that much. It wasn't any sort of odd smell in the room – it still smelled a little stuffy and closed-up, with a faded overlay of dried flowers (_Probably from whatever carpet-powder they use_) and an even fainter echo of the last travelers who'd lodged there. There wasn't much in the way of noise, either – muted traffic sounds filtered through the window, which had heavy drapes pulled mostly shut, and there was the distinctive chatter of someone watching a talk-show on the floor below them, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Remus climbed to his feet and grimaced at the slimy feel of his socks – he'd managed to fall asleep before removing his boots. He sat at the smallish table in the kitchen area and pulled up the legs of his jeans to get to the buckle on his footwear. If someone didn't look too closely, the boots simply looked like any other pair of 'engineer-style' motorcycle boots out there, but closer inspection would reveal that these particular boots weren't simple black leather, but something a bit more rare, deep blue and with a scale pattern nothing at all like a snake's or alligator's.

The dragon-hide boots had been the last Christmas present he'd received from Sirius before…well, _before_, and remained the single most-comfortable pair of shoes he'd ever worn. He'd had to get them re-soled twice, but the expense of doing so was more than worth it. He wasn't sure what he was going to do when the incredibly durable, but not indestructible, leather of the tops wore out – probably go into full mourning.

With the boots removed, he peeled his socks off and was tempted to toss the soppy cotton in the wastebasket, but his practicality rebelled at the thought. The socks landed in the sink instead.

The small portion of his brain not reveling in the sensations of drying his feet and donning a clean pair of socks was still chipping away at possible reasons why he woke up when he did.

_

* * *

Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

The left rear wheel of Remus' pickup fell outwards from the truck, landing in an explosive puff of dust and making the truck list sharply towards that corner amid the screech of creaking springs.

John cursed loudly, as did Bobby. Since Remus had no clue when it came to mechanical stuff, they were going to be the ones to have to fix the damage caused by the gremlin.

Joshua and Caleb dropped to the ground, and crawled closer to the truck, hoping to get a clear shot of the creature before it got bored with the truck and headed on to greener pastures while John and Bobby covered them.

Sam dutifully relayed all this to his brothers.

Harry was seated, Indian-style, on the floor with his eyes closed and Dean was rummaging around in Bobby's 'don't ever touch this on pain of death' cabinet. Sure, the cabinet was kept locked, but none of the boys would ever admit that a quick alohomora solved the issue of the lock quite nicely, and it was doubtful Remus had ever thought of the potential issue.

"Found 'em!" Dean exclaimed, holding up a tangled collection of charms dangling from an assortment of silk cords, chains, and leather strings. "What's the one I'm looking for again?"

"It's a seven-point star, on a leather cord, I think," Sam replied. "It's got this weird little eye-shape in the middle of the star, and a ring of flames around the star part."

"Got it. Just hafta untangle it from the rest," Dean said.

Sammy glanced away from the window and saw the mess that Dean was dealing with. "Just use a hair-straightening charm on 'em. It's what Uncle Moony uses to untangle my shoelaces, so it should work okay for that."

"_Ligamen_ _rectus_," Dean said, prodding the tangled mass with the tip of his Italian olivewood wand. The cords writhed like a nest of snakes and quickly untangled themselves. Dean extracted the charm they needed from the rest and balled the remaining ones back into their little cubby in the cabinet.

Meanwhile, outside, the adults were still trying to draw a bead on the gremlin. The right rear wheel detached from the truck, and the vehicle's rear end hit the gravel-and-dust drive with a painful-sounding crunch of metal. The gremlin darted out from under the crippled truck and scurried across the turn-about, heading straight for Bobby's tow-truck.

"Oh, no you don't, you son of a bitch," Bobby shouted, shooting three times in quick succession. Unfortunately, all three shots missed. They were enough to force the gremlin back towards Joshua's truck, though.

Before Sam could relay this latest development to Harry and Dean, Harry let out a rapid stream of Latin. His form blurred and seemed to melt into a completely new form – though not as new to the boys as it would have been had they not been in the same room while Harry was studying for this. In place of Harry, a half-grown cat with a tortoiseshell pattern in its fur and dark green eyes blinked in surprise. Even in a feline form, it was obvious to both Dean and Sam that Harry had managed to surprise himself.

Dean grinned and looped the charm from Bobby's cabinet around Sam's neck and ruffled his brother's hair. "Come on, let's see if we can't catch that gremlin before the grown-ups do."

The three boys went to the kitchen, where Dean handed Sam the cordless handset from the phone before they continued out the back door. They crept quietly around to the side of the house where Bobby parked the Chevelle. Dean hit both himself and Sam with a notice-me-not charm (though he'd asked several times to learn how to do a disillusionment charm, Remus kept saying 'no'). He then knelt down and whispered, "Harry, you go see if you can't herd the gremlin over this way. I'll get it with an impedimentia or body-bind, then shoot it. If anything goes wrong, though, you'll need to shout for Dad, Sammy, then call 911 if we get hurt. You know that charm-thing should keep you safe from the gremlin, so just stay still and out of the way, okay?"

Sam nodded, "Okay." He wanted to do more, but he realized that since he couldn't use magic and that since his dad hadn't started showing him how to shoot, there wasn't a whole lot else he could do about the gremlin. He kept the memory of how Dean had turned to him for the intel about them at the forefront of his brain, though. _Even if I can't shoot yet and can't do magic like Harry and Dean, they still need me._ He clutched the phone and smiled to himself.

Without any further conversation, Harry took off across the dusty stretch of ground between the corner of the house and where the adults had the gremlin cornered under Remus' pickup.

"Where'd the hell the cat come from?" Caleb shouted after it had used his back as a springboard.

Loud hissing and yowling coupled with angry, high-pitched chittering and metallic thumps and clangs came from the underbelly of the truck as John and Bobby shared a quick glance. Simultaneously, they yelled, "Harry!" in nearly-identical deep, growly, 'I-mean-business-buster' voices – much to Caleb's confusion.

The gremlin darted out from under the truck, followed closely by the gangly form of juvenile cat. The gremlin was obviously panicking, and headed for Bobby's tow-truck once more. Joshua rolled on the dusty ground to aim his hand-cannon at the creature, only to have it pulled nearly out of his grip by a fuming Bobby. "Not now, Joshua. Wait 'til," he glanced at Caleb before making a 'to hell with it' motion with his shoulders, "Harry's outta the way."

Caleb's confusion ratcheted up a notch.

The angry chittering from the gremlin grew louder as the half-grown cat yowled at it and leapt ahead of it, keeping it away from Bobby's tow-truck. The gremlin skidded on the loose dirt and rock of the turn-about and ran back the way it came, only to flop to a dead halt when Dean's voice echoed through the yard. "_Offendo!_" (1)

Wasting no time, the cat pounced on the gremlin and, amid growling, sank his teeth into the gremlin's neck. The fragile bones snapped, and the gremlin quit twitching in the cat's grasp. The cat then dragged the body of the gremlin over to where Dean stood – fully noticeable now that he'd drawn attention to himself by shouting – by the corner of the porch.

The cat let go of the gremlin and sat at Dean's feet, looking up with a feline smile on its face. Dean grinned at Harry, and reached down. He rubbed the top of the cat's head. "Yeah, you did good, Harry. Now, you think you can change back so Dad and Uncle Bobby can yell at us?"

The cat nodded.

Caleb gave up on trying to make sense of the past few minutes when the cat blurred and melted and twisted and did other things that made his brain hurt to try and watch; he further decided to either wait for a reasonable explanation from Joshua or just wipe this whole event from his memory when, once the brain-melting contortions were done, Harry stood in front of Dean, with a smear of the gremlin's blue-black blood across his lips and cheek.

Harry made a disgusted face and commenced spitting repeatedly. "Never gonna do that again," he groaned.

The groan was echoed by Dean when the boys looked up to see both John and Bobby striding across the turn-about.

"Uncle John?" Harry held up his hand. "Could you gimme five minutes before you yell at me? I'd really _love_ to brush my teeth right now."

"Where's Sam?" was John's reply.

The sound of the cordless phone picking that exact moment to start with its shrill ring shattered the weak charm around Sam. Bobby held his hand out for the phone and John made a sharp gesture that clearly meant 'front and center, boys, and yes, I'm too ticked to even _talk_ right now'.

* * *

**A/N2: **When writing this, I didn't expect the thing with the gremlin to happen - but it did, and I had a really good time writing it.

1. Stumble. (This translation is courtesy of my Latin/English dictionary, and I thought it made a good incantation for the tripping jinx, since no incantation for it was ever given in canon.)

The color-pattern of Harry's animagus form can be seen here:

http (colon, slash, slash) animal (dash) world (dot) com (slash) Cats (slash) Color-Pattern-Cats (slash) TortoiseShellCat (dot) php

If you can't get the link to work (doing as normal for ffnet's weirdo limitations), just do a Google image search for 'tortoiseshell cat'. And yes, I'm fully aware that that particular pattern is more commonly found on female cats, but this is _magic_ we're talking about here, not genetics.

This tale is complete and will run nine chapters. I will update every two or three days.

Thanks for reading and remember to let me know what you think!


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by Eric Kripke; various production elements including, but not limited to, Warner Brothers and the CW network. No money is being made from this intellectual exercise and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** I know I said back in my ch1 AN that Remus was about to turn thirty, but my beta pointed out that I'd misread the intel in the Lexicon – Remus' birthday is _March_ 10, not May 10, so he's _already _thirty.

* * *

**Ripple Effect**

_Wednesday, May 2, 1990  
Altadena, California_

Once his feet were snugly encased in soft, clean cotton socks, Remus took a deep, satisfied breath. _Oh, that's what woke me_, he thought, finally recognizing the distant, muted buzz in the back of his head. _Something got across the perimeter wards back home._ From the strength of the 'alarm', he could tell that whatever it was, it wasn't dire. But since the 'alarm' could still be heard at this distance, it was, indeed, serious.

Remus returned to his bed and reached for the heavy plastic phone on the small table that separated the two queen beds from one another. After aiming the phone in his direction, he dug out the calling card that would allow him to connect through to South Dakota without incurring outrageous fees on the hotel-bill. While dialing the seemingly endless series of numbers, he wished once more that cellular phones were a bit more affordable – not to mention reliable – because he was getting thoroughly _sick_ of having to track down a payphone every time he had to call home.

The phone rang twice before Bobby's gruff voice answered with a barked, "What?"

In the background, Remus could hear John ranting, "What the _hell_ were you three thinking? _Were_ you thinking?"

"Did I call at a bad time?" Remus asked.

"Oh, hey Remus. No, your timing couldn't be better. Joshua and Caleb dropped in, brought a damn gremlin with them. Just finished up with that not even a minute ago."

"Well that explains the buzz I was getting from the wards. I trust, since you dealt with it so quickly, nothing too major was affected? No injuries?"

"Naw, nothing too major. Mostly Joshua's truck – though the little sucker got into yours, too. I'm more'n half-tempted to just heap your truck, by the way. There's a solid little goat for sale down in Sansarc; the guy's only askin' three hundred for it."

Remus blinked at the thought of trading his truck for an animal that had a tendency to eat _anything_ (_And don't forget those _creepy_ eyes_). "Um…Bobby? I don't speak mechanic. You know that."

"What? Oh, the goat. It's a GTO. 1972. Pontiac, but a solid little car even for all that. Needs some work, and I wouldn't expect less for it only bein' three hundred, but once it's fixed up, she'll run for longer than that truck of yours."

Remus sighed. Bobby and John had been trying to talk him into getting rid of the truck ever since Raven found it for him. "What did the gremlin do to my truck?"

"Well…kinda dropped the tranny and tore off both rear wheels. Pro'ly cracked the back axle, too."

Even though Remus didn't know much about cars in general, he did know that what had happened to his truck likely meant that it wasn't worth the effort to fix. He sighed again. "I really don't want to have to change vehicles, Bobby, but if you can't fix my truck…"

The sound of John yelling at the boys in the background faded somewhat even as the reception became a bit more staticy. _Must have the phone outside,_ Remus thought. "Yeah, I'm lookin' at it now – didn't break the axle, but it _is_ bent to hell and back. Really not worth it. I'll see if Ricardo'll take something in trade for the goat, maybe he'll knock the price down some."

"You are sure about this goat-car of yours? I mean, you and John always seem to forget just how tall I am. It's why I never drive the Chevelle." Even with the seat pushed back as far as it would go, Remus never failed to wind up with severe bruises on his knees whenever he had to drive Bobby's car. The Impala was a little better about the leg-room, but he still managed to feel a bit crowded in it, too.

"Yeah, an' Ricardo's got a good three or four inches on even you, stretch. It was his daily, up 'til his wife told him to find something better on gas."

Suddenly, Remus realized just what car Bobby was talking about. "You mean that hideously orange thing that mechanic friend of yours drives?" He further recalled the first time he'd met the man – it was mutual surprise on both their parts to find someone who was even _close_ to their own height – but Bobby was right: Ben was about three inches taller than Remus.

"The same. Like I said, needs a little work, but most of it's cosmetic. I know Ben takes good care of his machines."

Remus sighed a third time. "Fine. Could we at least paint it something a bit more…subdued?"

"Dunno 'bout that. That orange color's hard to miss, even in blowin' snow."

"I'm sure," Remus dryly replied. "What about Joshua's truck?"

Bobby made a tsking noise. "Don't know if it'll ever roll again. I know I smelled burnin' clutch when it finally stopped, and I'm pretty sure I saw Joshua hold up the gear-shift at one point. He might be in the market for a new set of wheels, too."

"Gremlins can be a nasty bunch. Anyone get hurt?"

"Joshua's got a couple of claw-marks, but nothin' serious. No one else got so much as a bruise. But how come you didn't tell us Harry'd finished that cat-change-thing he was studyin'?"

One of Remus' eyebrows arched up. "Because, as of two nights ago, he was still working on it. Why do I get the feeling that the boys are now grounded?"

"Because they probably are – if John ever gets tired of yellin' at 'em. Told 'em to stay inside while we got that gremlin, but none of them listened. While the sucker was bouncin' from Josh's truck to yours and back, those three came up with their own plan to kill it, and Harry doin' that cat-thing was a big part of it."

Remus nodded, not realizing that Bobby had no way of seeing the motion over the phone. "Yes, I do seem to recall that cats are lethal to gremlins. It's one of the many reasons to keep a couple around."

"Might start doin' as much, though I don't think Regan will go for it." Regan was Bobby's latest in a long string of dogs he kept to keep the curious out of his piles of rust.

"Something to think about, at least," Remus said. "Listen, I'm going to go. Just wanted to make sure you all were fine. I'll call either later today or sometime tomorrow to check in and let you know how the hunt's going. Take care."

"You too. Hate to hafta find me a new librarian."

Chuckling softly so as not to wake Bill, Remus hung up the phone. _Like I told Bill earlier, I've long since learned not to underestimate just what those kids are capable of. Even if they do wind up grounded, I'm going to have to come up with suitable rewards for them – Harry especially. He's been working on the animagus transformation for nearly a year now, and despite all the literature that says no one under the age of seventeen has the focus, drive, or magical ability to attain it, he's already mastered it. And done it a whole five years faster than James and Peter and…Sirius._ Remus' good mood evaporated at the thought of the man who'd betrayed his friends. The werewolf swallowed hard and pushed aside the angry thoughts that surfaced every time he thought of how well Black had played them all.

A minor gurgle from his stomach let him know that it had been a good twelve hours since his last meal, so he grabbed the phone book from the shelf under the phone and thumbed through it to find a place that delivered this early in the day. Luck was with him. Three restaurants in the area delivered during lunch hours – a sandwich place, an Italian place that had pizza as well as pasta, and a Chinese place. He was seriously debating between a meatball sub from the sandwich place and a plate of sweet'n'sour pork when Bill stirred.

"Timizzit?"

"Pardon?"

Bill sat up and blearily scrubbed a hand across his face. He yawned, "I ahd, wha im ez ih?"

Remus blinked at Bill. "Sorry. Still didn't quite catch that."

"What time is it?" this time, Bill took care to enunciate each and every syllable very clearly and precisely.

"Don't be an arse, Harvelle. And it's coming up on eleven, local time. I was just deciding on something to eat. You want sandwiches or Chinese?"

"That depends," Bill replied reaching to the bedstand between his bed and the wall shared by the bathroom. "Does the Chinese joint have lo-mein and potstickers?"

"Lo-mein, yes, but I don't see potstickers on the menu."

"Sandwich, then. Turkey, swiss, rye, hot mustard. Hold the tomato. Extra pickles. I'm gonna take a shower."

Five minutes later, Remus was back on the phone, placing an order with the sandwich shop. When he discovered they would also deliver a six-pack of soda, he yelled through the bathroom door to get Bill's preference – Coke or Pepsi or whatever cola they had. When Bill finished in the bathroom, Remus told him that their lunch would be there in about thirty minutes, and 'your half comes out to five-thirteen.'

After setting aside the money for when the delivery boy showed with their meal, the two hunters broke out their notes and went over all the information they'd managed to assemble on the weirdness currently going down in town.

By the time their sandwiches were but distant memories, the sun was kissing the western horizon, and they had something resembling a decent plan. It was amusing to Bill how much information Remus was able to squeeze out over the telephone and reflected that it probably had something to do with the man's accent. In any case, Remus had an appointment with the coroner the next day – the coroner was under the assumption that Remus was an expert in animal attacks that the Department of Fish and Game had sent out while most of their personnel were otherwise occupied in the Cascades.

"So, tomorrow you'll go by the coroner's, get a look at the latest vic," Bill said, reading from the fastidiously neat notes he'd made, "and I'll see what else Ms. Munez from the newspaper article has to say. If we've got the time, we'll need to see if any of the other people who've found the bodies have anything to talk about that was kept out of the paper."

"It wouldn't hurt to take a look at the site, too. Go out in the daytime. All the attacks thus far indicate that whatever this is, it's also nocturnal."

Bill nodded. "Start there? Maybe we'll come across something that will make all the rest of this running around needless."

"Perhaps, but I wouldn't count on it."

"I'm not really counting on it, either, but it'd be nice."

_

* * *

Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

When John finally ran out of steam, Bobby stepped in and picked up where he'd left off. Then Joshua had a turn. Caleb merely leaned against the side of the house through all three lectures, randomly prodding the dead gremlin with a stick. Eventually, when the browbeatings started repeating themselves too much, Caleb finally cleared his throat.

No one noticed.

He tried again, "A-_hem_!" All three adults turned to look at the teenager and the kids visibly braced themselves for more yelling. "Can I say somethin', or will that earn me a lecture, too?"

"Get on with it, Caleb," Joshua growled.

"Okay, first off, I'm gonna ignore the whole were-kitty thing and ask what's most on my mind right now. What bothers you more, guys, the fact that the kids didn't stay inside, or the fact that they succeeded where we were failing miserably?" The three adults blinked. "From where I was, it looked to me like they managed to TCB a helluva lot faster than the four of us did – an' none of them got hurt, either." He motioned to the three parallel gashes on Joshua's cheek.

John took a half-step in Caleb's direction. "That doesn't matter. They coulda been seriously hurt!"

Caleb let out a huff of air that wanted to be a chuckle, but didn't quite dare. "Can I ask somethin' else, or am I pushin' my luck?"

John made a gesture with his hand that Caleb took to mean 'by all means, please be my guest'.

"Do you let them play in those piles of rust Singer likes to collect?"

"Yeah," John replied, clearly baffled as to where this was going. "So?"

"So…" Caleb drew the word out. "Ever hear of tetanus? Or how about broken bones? Jagged metal and a misplaced foot usually means at least stitches. Or how about the fact that I seen two different types of poisonous spider in these parts? You can't keep 'em safe from everythin'." He turned his attention to the kids. "Since ain't nobody else gonna say it, I will: Good job." The boys beamed at Caleb. "And since the yellin' seems done for now, could one of you _please_ tell me what the _hell_ was with the cat? _Please_?"

Suffice it to say that none of the three boys were grounded for their actions.

_

* * *

Thursday, May 3, 1990  
Altadena, California_

Thursday morning found Bill waking to a brightly sunny room. The curtains over the window had been pulled back and what little 'mess' he and Remus had made the night before had been cleaned up. Harvelle was more than a little relieved to find that, unlike so many other hunters with whom Bill had worked in the past, Remus didn't feel the need to plaster his notes all over the motel room's walls.

The location of his current cohort was easily discerned – the sound of water running in the bathroom was better than a neon sign. However, the noise added to the primary reason Bill woke when he did. He banged on the closed door. "Hurry up, man, 'else I'm gonna piss on your bed!"

Inside the shower, Remus shook his head, laughing to himself. "Help yourself, Bill," he called back over the rush of water. A light draft signaled the door opening.

"You sure you don't mind?" The sound of Bill's voice indicated that he'd merely cracked the door open for better communication.

Remus snickered, "I went to a boarding school, Bill. Any body-modesty I might once have possessed was well and truly squashed by the end of my first week at school. Just do me a favor, yeah?"

"What's that?"

"Don't flush."

"No problem," Bill replied, stepping into the steamy room.

Remus shut off the shower at roughly the same time Bill finished up. Remus' hand emerged from behind the curtain and snagged a towel off the rack between the toilet and tub. Bill quickly stepped over to the sink and washed his hands off, but what Remus had said about not being particularly body-shy proved true as the man stepped out of the shower with the towel around his waist.

Bill winced at the thick tangle of scars down the other man's left side. He let out a low whistle. "_Damn_, Lupin. Maybe I shoulda found someone else to hunt with, if _that's_ the kinda luck you run to."

Remus glanced down at the thick, white ropes of scar tissue. In all honesty, he didn't really notice his scars all that often; they were just a part of him, like his hair or his toenails. But looking from the scars that were visible on his shoulder to his reflection in the small mirror over the sink, he could see what Bill meant. He shrugged, pointedly using his left shoulder to do so, and said, "My luck wasn't all that great when I was young, that's for sure, but the last few years I've seen it do a complete one-eighty. So, I don't think you've got much to worry about."

"Can I ask…"

"What happened?" Remus shrugged again. "It's nothing all that special," _It only changed my life forever_, "the neighbor's Irish Wolfhound ran rabid when I was four. I was, unfortunately, mistaken by the beast for a rabbit." _And if I ever find that mutt, I'm going to put a silver bullet through his chest. I won't even feel bad about it._ "Rabies shots are actually _worse_ than popular myth would have you believe. At least, they were back in '64; I don't know what they're like now, thank Merlin."

That wasn't the first time Remus had used 'Merlin' in place of other cursing options, and Bill had to wonder about it. Realizing that he was still in the bathroom with a mostly-naked guy, he made a mental note to ask about it later and returned to the main room to follow Remus' example in getting dressed for the day.

Remus was thankful that Bill disappeared when he did – he wasn't sure how the other hunter felt about magic (some of the magic-aware hunters he'd crossed paths with were oddly adamant in their mistrust of magic and wizards) and didn't know for-sure if Bill was even aware of the magical world – so he could transfigure an outfit of jeans, t-shirt, and flannel button-down into a decent simulacrum of a suit. It wouldn't do to show up at the coroner's office looking like a reject from the Salvation Army grab-bin.

By the time he was ready to go, Bill was also dressed, though not in a suit. Bill's outfit was a pair of worn-looking slacks and a plain, dark blue button-down. It suited the impression the man was going for as a member of the press. All that he really needed to round out the look would have been a tweed jacket, but the weather was really too warm to justify a jacket, regardless of how well it would complete things.

"So… Are we ready for this?" Bill asked, double-checking to make sure he had a pen in his pocket – his legal pad for this hunt was tucked under his arm.

Remus nodded, "Now or never, and with people dying, I'm more for 'now'."

Bill chuckled, "You an' me both."

* * *

**A/N2: **David Thewlis, the man who plays Lupin in the Harry Potter movies, is listed as being somewhere between 6'2" and 6'5", depending on the source. Personally, I've always pictured Lupin as being extremely tall, but who is also the kind of guy who perpetually slouches and otherwise makes himself seem of much shorter stature.

The GTO can be seen here (at least, how it'll look when Bobby and John and Dean and Harry get done with it):

http (colon, slash, slash) corinthclassiccars (dot) com (slash) listings (slash) images (slash) 18 (underscore) 7 (dot) jpg

This tale is complete and will run nine chapters. I will update every two or three days.

Thanks for reading and remember to let me know what you think!


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by Eric Kripke; various production elements including, but not limited to, Warner Brothers and the CW network. No money is being made from this intellectual exercise and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** Another installment for your enjoyment!

* * *

**Ripple Effect**

_Thursday, May 3, 1990  
Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

The gremlin's disassembly of Joshua's pickup turned out to be a blessing in disguise; until the creature showed up, Joshua had been planning on pausing at Singer's place long enough to see if the junkyard had a set of shocks that would fit the truck before going on to the Roadhouse for the night. If the gremlin hadn't decided that Joshua's truck was an ideal candidate for its next victim, Joshua would have wound up with much bigger problems; he'd never suffered chicken pox as a child, and catching it as an adult wasn't a particularly good idea.

So, instead of spending an hour or two at Singer's before heading down to Nebraska on their way back to their current home-base in Oklahoma City, Joshua and Caleb wound up staying the night at Singer's. Joshua got Remus' bedroom and Caleb camped out on the sofa in the living room.

Another unintentional side-effect of the appearance of the gremlin and its subsequent destruction was that Caleb wound up being introduced to all things magic. Since Remus wasn't there, it fell on Harry, Dean, and Sam to explain things, with a little help from Joshua.

In all honesty, Caleb took it rather well, summing up his feelings with the statement, "If there's demons and ghosts and gremlins and all that out there goin' _bump_ in the night, why should I be surprised there's real wand-wavin' _magic_ out there, too?" Caleb seemed more upset that Joshua hadn't told him of this sooner, particularly once the man admitted that though he wasn't a wizard himself, his older sister _was_. Furthermore, sometime during the lengthy discussion the previous night, it was revealed that Remus was an honest-to-god howl-at-the-moon _werewolf_, and that Joshua's sister was the one who made a potion each and every month that would ensure Remus would keep his own mind during his transformations. After _that_ little admission, more discussion followed on the differences between a werewolf who had access to magic and one who didn't – the potion was deadly poisonous to anyone without magic.

Eventually, the conversation died and everyone went to bed. Caleb slept well on the lumpy old sofa – the lumps in the cushions were in just the right places to add extra support right where a sleeper needed it, further solidifying Caleb's assumption that the uglier the couch, the more comfortable it was – though his dreams were chaotic, melding memory and fanciful imaginings pertaining to the topics discussed just prior to sleep.

A lingering result of growing up at Saint Theresa's Home for Unfortunates was that Caleb's inner alarm-clock was permanently set on six in the morning, regardless of his best efforts to change it; no matter what time he fell asleep, his eyes always snapped open of their own accord at precisely six; even if he'd only just laid down at five or five-thirty. And so Caleb found himself staring up at the ceiling, painted with the golden light of dawn, while the rest of the house slept. He was still trying to process the information he'd been given the night before and wondered if he was going to have to live through any more major alterations to his world-view in his lifetime. _Who knows? Maybe aliens _are_ real, Dick Clark really _is_ an android, and the Illuminati really _do_ run everything behind the scenes._

Eventually, as fascinating as the ceiling was, Caleb had to get up. He stopped by the WC that was sandwiched back between the kitchen and the combination laundry room/dirty boot storage area/side entrance before wondering if helping himself to the coffee would be a good plan or a bad plan. The thought of breakfast flitted briefly across his brain before being discarded. His last attempt at frying an egg back at his and Josh's place in Okie City had resulted in two empty fire-extinguishers and severe smoke-damage to their kitchen. _Yeah, guys like me are why diners exist in the first place._ Ignoring the rumbling of his stomach, he focused instead on getting Singer's coffee maker to produce some elixir of life.

Since he had no idea what time the rest of the house would be getting up, he settled in at the kitchen table with his coffee. Once the second cup started working, he poked around for something to read and found the only books on offer in the kitchen to all be related to cooking in one fashion or another. It was a definite difference from his and Josh's kitchen reading material – most of which were catalogues from different hunting-supply places, with a light dusting of archaic tomes in languages that had died simply because no one knew how to freakin' _spell_ – and settled on one that seemed to have more than just recipes in it. _Maybe I can avoid a repeat performance of the egg-incident._

_

* * *

Altadena, California_

_For this supposedly being a 'reservoir', it's got to be one of the _driest_ places I've ever seen,_ Remus thought as he climbed out of Bill's Dodge Dart. _Smaller than I expected, too._ For all that he'd seen the location of Devil's Gate Reservoir on the map, he hadn't taken the time to translate the image into real-world dimensions. The area was a dusty, dry, thoroughly uninteresting spit of land in a rough eye-shape. The northern point abutted Hahamongna Watershed Park – the two separated by a smallish parking area and a narrow road – while the southern point connected to Oak Grove Park – which actually _looked_ like a park, with trees and manicured grassy spots. Compared to both Hahamonga and Oak Grove, Devil's Gate looked more like a strip of undeveloped or abandoned empty lots. The eastern side of the 'reservoir' was a commercial or industrial district (Remus was unsure, as none of the buildings had much in the way of identification visible from where he stood), and the western side was Altadena's main middle-class neighborhood.

A light breeze stirred the dust up and made Remus sneeze violently.

"Gesundheit," Bill said automatically while surveying the area. "Sure don't look like much, huh?"

Remus dug his handkerchief out of a pocket of his jacket and nodded. "And they call this a 'reservoir'. I always thought that meant a lake or pond of some sort." He sneezed twice more, this time into his handkerchief, and started taking a closer look at the area.

Among the dust and rock of the ground, there was a surprising amount of broken glass, cigarette butts, and other litter. Scattered here and there were small, struggling clumps of brush and sickly-looking tufts of grassy weeds. A couple of sets of tire-tracks marked where someone had employed a less-than-legal shortcut. There weren't any trees and the area was generally flat. The only real cover were the aforementioned weedy brush.

"You and me both," Bill agreed. "There ain't much here. Makes me wonder just why the thing picked _here_ as its hunting-grounds."

Ignoring the tell-tale tickle in his nose that warned of another impending sneeze, Remus shrugged a little and nodded in the direction of the assorted tire-tracks. "Take a closer look, Bill. Seems like a lot of people employ this as a shortcut of sorts."

Bill turned slightly to see what Remus was looking at. "Yeah…predators hunt on game-trails. Makes as much sense as anythin' else."

The tickle grew more insistent and a faint itching sensation crept up in Remus' eyes. He stifled the sneeze. Once it passed, he double-checked to make sure his eyes were still in their sockets.

"You okay?"

Remus nodded, "Yeah. Must be all the dust. Going back to why here, though…" He paused to retrieve his handkerchief. "In a city this size, a regular predator would be more likely to stick to areas with a high volume of foot-traffic. Since this thing has obviously chosen a place," another sneeze interrupted him. "Excuse me. Chosen a place with no nighttime lighting and likely little to no security camera coverage, this suggests to me that it's either sensitive to electrical fields or it's intelligent." He sneezed again.

"You _sure_ you're alright?"

"Yes," Remus replied. "Didn't start sneezing until we got here."

"Hayfever?"

"Never had it before."

Bill dropped the topic. "Anyway, I think you're probably right about why here. But the only thing I can think of that's all that sensitive to electrical fields and that likes the way us humans taste is a land-shark. Ain't never heard of one hunting in a town, though. The surrounding city's got enough electrical shit that it wouldn't be able to get here – the lines woulda fried its navigation."

"Agreed," Remus replied. "Well, that's _one_ knocked off the list of possibilities."

"Only about a bajillion to go." Bill sighed and glanced at his watch. "What time you gotta be at the coroner's?"

"Ten," Remus replied.

"It's comin' up on nine now – we should probably start headin' that way. No tellin' what traffic's gonna be like between here an' there."

_

* * *

Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

Caleb had just finished a chapter in the worth-its-weight-in-gold cooking manual on the differences between slicing, dicing, mincing, chopping, and other ways of taking a large something and making it smaller when Bobby appeared in the kitchen. "Morning, Bobby," he said, nodding to the older hunter.

Bobby grunted in reply as he headed for the coffee pot.

About twenty minutes later – long enough for Bobby to have downed two cups of caffeine – Singer started rummaging in the cupboards, muttering to himself.

"Huh?" Caleb asked, looking up from the book.

"Just cussin', nothin' serious. Always hate it when Remus is off on a hunt – he's the only real cook we got. He takes off an' we're back to cold cereal for breakfast instead of _real_ food." Bobby found what he was looking for – a box of, of all things, Coco Puffs. Catching the look Caleb was leveling in his direction, Bobby slammed the box on the counter. "What?"

Caleb shook his head, "Nothin'. Just…never really pegged you as a Coco Puffs kinda guy."

"Why – you think I should be chowin' down on shredded wheat or somethin'?"

Though Caleb hadn't really thought about it before that instant, he did have to admit that had he thought about it before, he would have pictured Bobby more of a bran kind of cold cereal person. "Never mind," was all he said.

Joshua and John showed up nearly at the same instant a few minutes later. They cleaned up the last of the coffee in the pot, and John started some fresh. By the time it finished brewing, the boys had joined everyone in the now-crowded kitchen. As the most-alert of the group, not to mention one who enjoys observing people just for the sake of people-watching, Caleb found the cereal selection of those present somewhat amusing. Dean, like Bobby, helped himself to the Coco Puffs, while John and Harry had bowls of Sugar Smax. Sam was the odd man out, so to speak, in eating something marginally healthy – Caleb didn't recognize the brand, but saw that his choice was some sort of granola with dried fruit and nuts mixed in. Joshua would eat later, he knew, after he finished waking up. With his own stomach rumbling, Caleb quickly weighed the options available before settling on the Sugar Smax.

As people finished their breakfasts and bowls began to accumulate in the sink, intelligible conversation started. Joshua and Bobby began discussing options on what to do with Josh's truck while the three boys chattered about it being Sam's birthday and what they wanted to do – in listening in on the boys' conversation, Caleb learned that it was a longstanding tradition that the birthday boy got to pick a place to eat out for dinner. Dean was trying to talk Sam into pizza, but Harry was pressing for burgers. John seemingly ignored everything and simply read through a stack of papers that had been delivered the previous afternoon.

_

* * *

Altadena, California_

After dropping Remus off at the coroner's office downtown – and even leaving as early as they had, they still managed to arrive nearly fifteen minutes late – Bill headed back to Altadena. Remus had assured him that he could find his own way back to the motel. His first stop was the home of Rachel Munez, the woman who had found the latest victim.

Her home was a typical one-story ranch dating to the mid-seventies, done in plain brick with white trim, and located only a couple of blocks over from Devil's Gate. He had lucked out in getting her on the phone the evening before, and so she was expecting him.

Over rather watery coffee and cookies from a chain bakery, Ms. Munez reiterated the same story she'd told the _Times_. Even actively directing the conversation to open plausible lines on the supernatural, she didn't mention anything new. Two hours after arriving, Bill left somewhat disappointed that she couldn't give any helpful information, and headed to the next name on his list – the family of the first victim.

Julian Corin was nearly as unhelpful as Munez had been, but the man had confirmed that his late wife had often used Devil's Gate as a shortcut to work.

As he headed to the home of another potential source of information, Bill hoped that Remus was having better luck down at the coroner's office.

_

* * *

Los Angeles, California_

The LA County Coroner was rather rushed and frazzled, meeting with Remus only briefly before handing him off to one of his assistants. Remus didn't mind much; as it turned out, the assistant – a Dr. Carolyn Tucker by name – was the one who had performed the actual autopsies on four of the five bodies recovered from Devil's Gate Reservoir. The fact that she was, to borrow one of Bobby's preferred idioms, 'easy on the eyes' had nothing to do with it. Or so Remus kept telling himself.

Though the bodies themselves had already been claimed, Dr. Tucker allowed Remus full access to the files she'd compiled, including all the grisly photos. "Damnedest thing I've ever seen, that's for sure," she said, helping Remus sort through the files. "I know it's got to be some sort of animal, but just what…well, I'll admit I'm out of my depth." She continued talking somewhat incessantly while directing Remus' attention to the more detailed of the photographs.

Remus tried to let her chatter wash over him and focus on the task at hand, but it was difficult. The echoing fact that he'd not had a date since his disastrous encounter with Madam Puddifoot's with Sue-Anne Carson in seventh year kept trying to side-track him.

Despite his best efforts, he left the coroner's office with a garbled collection of half-coherent notes. He didn't care; he was sure he would either be able to decipher his notes later or they would be rendered unneeded by Bill's research. Carolyn's bright smile, rich dark hair, and sparkling blue eyes followed him the rest of the day.

As did her promise to meet him for breakfast Saturday morning.

_

* * *

Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

When lunchtime rolled around, the kitchen once again filled to near-bursting. Caleb had spent the morning reading the cooking manual and wondering if anyone would notice if he 'borrowed' it long enough to figure out how to use the stove without risking a visit from the men with the big trucks and powerful hoses. He knew that John had been going through the papers and that Josh and Bobby had disappeared outside to look over the truck, but he hadn't a clue what the boys had been doing – not that it really mattered all that much.

During the meal, which consisted of potato chips and sandwiches all around (with the addition of apples for the kids), John brought up the fact that he'd located a probable hunt over near Omaha. "From what the paper has to say," he said, "it sounds like a poltergeist. No one's been seriously injured yet, but the activity is escalating."

Following that statement, a 'discussion' broke out between John and Bobby as to who would go take care of it. Since both hunters were loud and stubborn, it didn't take long for it to devolve into a shouting match. Joshua met Caleb's gaze and cocked his head towards where the boys were caught up in their own conversation, seemingly oblivious to the argument going on between Winchester and Singer. Caleb realized exactly what Josh was on about and smiled lightly, punctuating it with a 'why not' shrug. _It ain't like we can do much else 'til either the truck's fixed or we find a new set of wheels. Too bad Josh didn't agree to let me bring the Toronado with us this time._

Joshua let out a piercing whistle that managed to halt both the boys' conversation and the adults' argument. "No need ta be that loud, guys," Joshua said. "Me an' Caleb can keep an eye on the boys. No one should tackle a poltergeist solo." Before either Singer or Winchester could argue, Joshua continued, "Besides, ya said it yourself, John. It's gonna take at least a week or two ta get the truck back on the road. Three or four days to track down somethin' else if I decide to scrap it. Me an' Caleb ain't goin' nowhere for at least that long, an' if it _is_ a 'geist, that should be about the right amount of time to take care of it."

Harry exchanged quick looks with his brothers. "Joshua's got a point, uncles," he said. "Moony's always the one who says not to go after a poltergeist on your own, so neither of you should – you're always saying how Moony knows what he's talking about. And it's not like we," he motioned to himself, Dean, and Sam, "don't know the rules when any of you are gone. We'll be fine. And you should really take care of the job before someone _does_ get hurt."

From Caleb's point-of-view, it was more due to the boys' assertions that they'd behave for Joshua and Caleb than Joshua's offer of babysitting that settled the matter. The other thing to be settled during their lunch was where Sam wanted to have supper. He picked the diner in Eagle Butte – something Caleb hadn't expected, but was pleased with nonetheless; the diner was known in the hunting community as having some of the best meatloaf on offer.

_

* * *

Altadena, California_

On returning to their room at the Meteorite Inn, Remus found no evidence that Bill was done with his collection of interviews yet, so he decided to go back out to the 'reservoir' and have another look around. He whistled lightly to himself as he canceled the transfiguration on his clothes before apparating to his destination.

As had happened that morning, within minutes of arriving at the dusty chunk of undeveloped land, sneezing commenced. He made a mental note to see if he had any anti-allergy potions in his kit before digging out his handkerchief.

He didn't find much more than they'd noticed that morning, though he did go over the entire area, from the northernmost point down to where it bordered Oak Grove. He found three sets of nonhuman footprints – two cats and a dog – a tattered ten-dollar bill, and more candy-wrappers than he could count, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Just when he was about to give up and return to the motel, a voice interrupted his systematic search of the area. "Lose something?"

Remus looked up and to his left. A man, somewhere in that hard-to-pin age category of forty to sixty, was leaning against one of the outermost trees of Oak Grove. The man was wearing, despite the eighty-degree weather, long pants crusted with grime, and at least two sweatshirts under an old army-surplus jacket. A battered backpack was on the ground at his feet.

"No," Remus replied. "Just trying to figure something out."

"This about them killins?" the man asked, rubbing the thick stubble of his chin.

"Why do you ask?"

"Never mind," the man grumbled, stooping to pick up his bag.

"Please," Remus hurried over to the man. "Do you know something about what's been happening here?"

The man straightened and slung the backpack over his shoulder while staring hard at Remus. The man nodded to himself and asked, "How long's it been?"

"Pardon?"

"Since you was like me. Normal folk – them's as ain't been here – they don't see me. Or iffen they do, it's like they're notin' where a dog done his business so's not to step in it. You don't do that, so you been here. How long ago?"

Remus smiled in realization. "Just over six years."

"How'd ya get out?"

"I made some really good friends. They gave me a chance, and I'm happy that they did. More grateful with each day that passes, in fact."

"I'll bet," the man said. "You got some spare cash?"

Remus nodded and gave the man the ten he'd found in his sweep of the park. He then sneezed.

"God bless," the man said, and Remus wasn't sure if it was as a thank you for the money or in response to his sneeze.

"You know something about what's been happening here, don't you?" Remus asked, trying to ignore the persistent tickle in his nose.

The man nodded. "I seen it happen twice now."

* * *

**A/N2: **I hope everyone's still enjoying this. Only a few more chapters to go!

This tale is complete and will run nine chapters. I will update every two or three days.

Thanks for reading and remember to let me know what you think!


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by Eric Kripke; various production elements including, but not limited to, Warner Brothers and the CW network. No money is being made from this intellectual exercise and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** Kripke owns my soul - especially after seeing ep 5.03. Just thought y'all should know.

* * *

**Ripple Effect**

_Thursday, May 3, 1990  
Altadena, California_

Remus practically had to physically restrain himself from seizing the man. "Twice? Did you get a clear look at what it is?"

The man nodded slowly and retrieved a battered pack of PalMals from his jacket pocket. "Not this last one, but I seen it. Was a full moon. Happened just over yonder," he jerked his chin towards a spot about fifty yards from the tree they stood under. He fumbled with a mostly-empty book of matches and got his smoke lit before continuing. "I tried to tell the cops what showed up the next day, but all I got was a night in the tank for it. I don't blame 'em none. They see me, they think drugs. They think booze. They don't stop to think that that shit costs money, and it's all I can do to keep in food and smokes." He took a long drag off the slightly bent cigarette. "But like I said, I don't blame 'em none. Hell, _I _hardly believe me, and I ain't in the habit of disbelievin' what I see."

"Please, tell me what you saw," Remus punctuated his plea with yet another violent sneeze.

"Tell ya what, you take me back to wherever you holed up, lemme use a shower, maybe a bite to eat, and I'll tell ya what I saw. Ain't no point in lingerin' 'round here if alls you can do is sneeze."

Remus discovered the hard way that trying to laugh and sneeze at the same time is hazardous to one's health. "I don't think it will be a problem," he said, once he got his breath back. "I'm Remus, by the way, Remus Lupin."

"Chris," the man said, making a gesture with his lit cigarette to indicate that Remus should lead the way.

"Just Chris?" Remus asked, setting a pace he knew the roamer could keep up with, no problem.

"Yeah. Only name that matters is the one you answer to."

"At least until you do something unforgivable and actually manage to become respectable," Remus replied, taking care to make sure his tone was lightly teasing. The last thing he needed was to offend what promised to be the best source of information available for this particular hunt.

Chris chuckled in agreement.

The pair quickly left the reservoir behind them, and Remus' sneezing faded with the distance. In short order, they arrived at the aging motel.

While Remus had been poking around at Devil's Gate, Bill had returned and left again – a sticky note on the television set said he'd gone for pizza and that he hoped Remus didn't mind mushrooms and pepperoni. Remus crumpled the little slip of paper and tossed it in a wastebasket. "That from your other half?" Chris asked, making himself at home in one of the room's two smallish armchairs.

Remus shook his head, "Not as such – just my business partner this week." He indicated the bathroom, "Shower's through there, and food should be here before long."

Chris lingered long enough to rummage in his oft-patched backpack before nearly bolting for the promise of hot water and soap. The water was still running twenty minutes later when Bill returned with two large pizzas and a six-pack of a local beer which Remus didn't recognize. After setting the food on the table in the kitchen area, Bill looked to the closed bathroom door and said, "You know, I'd've thought, since you went to a boarding school and all, that you'd know you're s'posed to put a sock on the doorknob. Or, you know, use the 'do not disturb' sign."

Remus helped himself to a slice from the top box, "No, it's not like that. I found a witness to what's been going on around here lately. This was the price for his information."

Bill, still laboring under the misconception that Remus 'batted for the other team', leveled a look at his temporary roommate that nearly made Remus choke on his pizza.

"What's so funny?" Bill asked, not sure if he should be insulted or not.

"It's simply the fact that though I've happened across the term a time or two, I hadn't been able to picture the expression before now."

"What term?"

"A 'hairy eyeball'," Remus explained, then elaborated, "and no, it's not like you're no doubt thinking." The werewolf quickly finished his slice and snagged another from the box. "Don't fret, you're not the first to make that sort of assumption about me, but I do have to assure you it's quite patiently false."

"What assumption?" Bill cracked open a can of beer and grabbed his own slice of pizza.

"I've found that most individuals here – the US, I mean – assume that I'm far more educated than I am simply because I have a British accent; the truth of the matter is I've finished the equivalent of high school and that's _it_, I never went to university. Add to that the fact that my grandmother literally beat manners into me with her favorite wooden spoon, and suddenly, nearly every man I speak with automatically assumes I'm not at all interested in women. Luckily, this odd cultural blindness doesn't seem to affect the ladies of this country." He ended his 'lecture' with a wolfish smirk. Yes, his speech had managed to make Bill rather uncomfortable, but Remus figured it made a decent subtle payback for being manipulated into doing more than his fair share of driving on their way to LA.

Before Bill could decide if he needed to apologize or not, their guest finally emerged from the bathroom. Remus noted that Chris was now wearing a far cleaner pair of jeans and a t-shirt that was the distinctive dirty grey color that had once been either dark blue or black. Remus managed introductions and told Chris to help himself to the pizza. A quick glance to Bill further allowed their guest a share of the beer. While they ate, Remus and Bill filled the silences with some meaningless chatter. When it became apparent that the last five slices of pizza weren't in any immediate danger, Bill grabbed his pen and notebook. Remus invited Chris to share what he'd witnessed.

"Like I said, it wasn't this last body they found. Was the second one. Saw somethin' similar a few days before that one, but it weren't as clear. To be honest, I thought I'd dreamed that first time. But anyways, like I said, was a full moon. Ev'ry thing happened about three hunnert feet from me, an' though my near-sight's gone to hell in a rotten fruit basket, the far-sight's still as sharp as ever. Until summer break starts for the kids, I usually sleep in Oak Grove. After the little bastards are let loose, the cops start trollin' the area pretty regular. Never did sleep real good with a lot of light, so I wasn't sleepin' sound – ev'ry li'l noise kept wakin' me up. Gave up on sleep for a while, thought I'd take a walk or somethin'." He glanced from Remus to Bill and back before continuing. "I just reached that tree where I run inta you when I saw it."

After several moments of silence, Remus nodded for the man to continue. "What did you see?"

"Hard ta describe. Ain't never been real good with words. But I'll try." Chris closed his eyes, bringing the memory up to the forefront of his brain. "Was crouched down, so I didn't notice it at first. But then it stood up… Taller 'an me, but not by much. Had this real long neck. The head looked somethin' like a horse, but not as long, an' raised up like a hound scentin' a trail. Damn thing looked right at me and let out this god-awful shriek. Its eyes looked like a kid had superglued a pair of tennis balls to its head, but they were totally dark. Don't know for sure what color, but the eyes were these bubbles of black like oil stickin' out its head – the rest of it was the same shade o' pale as the ground out there. It walked on two legs, but not like a man. The knees bent backward, like a bird, ya know? And the feet… Thought for a minute 'at the damn thing had a coupla the biggest damn spiders I ever seen hangin' with it, but they were its _feet_." Chris paused long enough to finish off the beer he'd started with his supper. Another glance to Bill had a fresh one passed to him. "Thanks," he said, popping the tab. "The rest of it was more-or-less human, but real, whassaword? When things ain't the right sizes as to one another?"

"Disproportionate," Remus supplied.

"Yeah, that's it. Disproportionate. The thing's legs were real long an' skinny, like its neck, but its arms were short an' looked like they come off a one o'them body-builders. The rest of it was sorta like a water balloon, but less… Less _there_ than the rest of it." Chris took a slow breath. "Like I said, the thing looked right at me and shrieked. Sounded a helluva lot like a cougar I heard once when I was a kid. I ain't ashamed to say I turned an' ran like hell. Found the nearest tree I thought was tall enough to fend it off, an' climbed that sucker faster 'an greased snot. The thing followed me for a coupla steps, but I dunno if the shadows under the trees confused it or if it just figured I ain't worth the trouble, but it turned 'round and went off after this chick that was cuttin' through from work – I'd seen her a time or two, goin' to an' from work, but she was too far off for me to warn her. And that's sayin' she'd've believed me, even if it hadn't've been too far."

In the ensuing silence, Remus closed his own eyes and sketched up a mental image based off of Chris's description. _Thin neck, horse-like head, protuberant eyes, disproportionately long legs and short arms, semi-ethereal bulbous belly… Huh. Never thought I'd find one of those here. They almost never are found off the main islands of Japan – they don't much like traveling over open water. Though, it could have flown in on a cargo-transport or the like._

"Whacha thinkin'?" Bill asked, knowing, even from the short time he'd been in Remus' presence, that the other man had figured out what they were after.

Remus opened his eyes. "I think," he slowly said, turning to face Chris, "that you should probably head on to wherever you head during the summer months. It would be safest."

Chris nodded, "I'd figured on as much already, just hadn't gotten word on it bein' clear just yet. Place I norm'ly head to's been put on fire-alert already."

Remus frowned and thought hard for a moment. "How are you at catching out?"

"What?" Bill interrupted, confusion etched on his face.

Remus made a 'not now' motion and focused on Chris. Chris shrugged, "Ain't done it in a helluva long time. Why?"

"What you saw is called a 'gaki', and I'm willing to bet real money that the reason it's been sticking to the area has been because of _you_."

"Hey!" Chris protested, "what'd I ever do to it?"

Remus shook his head, "It's nothing you did. It was probably looking for a decent place to lair up – this is the first I've heard of one in the US – when it caught your scent. Do you often sleep in the trees; literally up in the branches?"

Chris nodded. "Yeah. It's about the only place no one looks real hard for folk."

Remus made a 'there you have it' motion with his hands. "It caught your scent and likely decided that the reservoir was an ideal spot for it to live – but since you already live there, so to speak, it thinks of you as a territorial rival. To its way of thinking, it's going to have to kill you or drive you off so it can take 'your' territory. Since you inadvertently picked the single best place you could to sleep – gaki can't climb – the nocturnal creature wasn't able to get to you – but anyone on the ground has been fair game."

While Lupin spoke, Bill could see just why it was that the man had been relegated to being the boys' teacher.

Remus took a sip and made a face at the now-warm beer before setting the half-full can on the table. "They're originally from Japan, just in case you were wondering. But seriously, you should disappear for a few days, get as far from here as you can, and give me and Bill here a chance to catch it and send it home. Gaki are more than a little focused and it _will_ track you if you stay in the city."

"How come I ain't heard of these things before?" Chris asked.

Remus shrugged, "I wouldn't know, but it probably has to do with the fact that they're native to Japan and are very rarely found off those islands. In fact, I'd be very surprised if more than a handful of people here in the US have heard of them as more than bedtime stories among the Japanese communities."

Chris sighed and finished off his beer. He stood, "When I get back come September, that thing'll be gone?"

Remus nodded, "I promise."

Chris picked up his backpack and glanced towards the window. Sometime during the course of their conversation, the sun had fully set. "The eleven o'clock, I think. Heads on up to San Fran and Sacramento. That far enough, you think?"

"Should be," Remus replied.

"Thanks for the grub," Chris said, and without further words, disappeared out the door.

Bill allowed about half a heartbeat of silence before starting in on Remus with the questions. "First off, what the _hell_ is 'catching out'? And just what is this gaki-thing you're talking about? It a ghost? Demon? Creature?"

Remus held his hand up in the universally recognized signal to stop. "Whoa, Bill. Breathe before you pass out. And a gaki is a mostly-corporeal low-level demon. Like I told Chris, they supposedly originate in Japan – at least, the name does, and this _is_ the first I've heard of one in the Americas."

"So how'd we get rid of it? Exorcism?"

Remus shook his head. "No, no need. It's got its own body and can be killed because of that."

"Then what's 'mostly-corporeal' about it?"

"The name is Japanese for 'hungry ghost' – gaki are perpetually hungry and will eat just about anything that doesn't eat them first; since their stomachs are basically extra-dimensional space, they _never_ get full."

"So how do we kill it?"

"That's the easy part," Remus replied, heading for his valise. He removed two wooden boxes from its depths and opened the smaller of the two. "Silver works better than just about anything else for them – but you _do _have to hit them in the head for it to be effective."

Bill watched as Remus removed his revolver from the box and set to cleaning the weapon. "What's the hard part?" he couldn't help himself from asking.

"Catching it," Remus said. "They're nearly blind as well as mostly deaf, but their sense of smell is…beyond phenomenal."

"You said it's nocturnal. Why don't we track it back to wherever it dens down for the day?" Bill followed Remus' example and retrieved his duffle and began sorting through it for his pistol. _I'll get the rest of it out of the trunk later._

"Two problems with that," Remus paused long enough to wipe a small droplet of gun oil off of where it shouldn't be before placing the smallish bottle back into the box. "Firstly, did you hear Chris's description of its feet? Gaki have four toes, like most birds, but they walk on the very tips of those toes. The only prints we'd be able to find wouldn't look like prints because they'd look just like any other roundish hole in the ground. If the ground out at Devil's Gate weren't so hard, like if it was sand or mud, we might have had a chance, but with it as dry as it is… I'm not holding out hope that we'll find much." Remus quickly had the gun put back together, somewhat proud of the fact that though he didn't much care for firearms in general, he _did_ know how to use one. He retrieved a small box of ammunition from the wooden box and sat it next to the gun before pulling one of the latex gloves onto his right hand. "The second issue relates directly to the fact that gaki are nocturnal. During daylight hours, they literally crawl inside their own stomachs to sleep – recall what I said about that part of their anatomy being extra-dimensional?" Bill nodded, getting what Remus was saying, but further mystified as to why his fellow hunter was using a glove to load his gun. "So we literally wouldn't locate it in the daytime, because it's technically not _here_."

"Well, that…sucks." Bill sighed and started taking apart his own gun – a .45 caliber semi-automatic of indeterminate origin. "And 'catching out'?"

Remus chuckled, "Oh, that. That's what it's called when someone hitches a ride on a freight train."

"I take it, that's something you've done before?"

"Sure have," Remus admitted, snapping the cylinder of his gun closed and putting the rest of the ammo back in the wooden box. "Didn't find out that's what it was called until after I'd come to the US, but when I was growing up, I used to hop the train that ran through the town I lived in and ride it until I got to the town where Harry's father lived. Probably among the most idiotic things I've ever done – I could have been killed a dozen times over each time I did it."

Bill let the topic drop and refocused the discussion back on the gaki. "So what are we going to do? Just head out there and hope the sucker shows itself?"

Remus smiled, "That is the plan. It'll show, though, simply because we'll be out there. It can't turn down a 'free' meal. I figure I'll play bait – you've got a rifle with you, yes? And silver for it?" He turned his attention to the larger of the two wooden boxes he'd removed from his bag. It was filled with an odd conglomeration of vials, bottles, and small jars in assorted colors of glass. Remus selected a clear glass vial, containing an odd purple liquid, and downed the contents before returning the empty vial to the box.

Bill nodded, "Don't leave home without it."

"Then you take a point up in one of those trees at the edge of Oak Grove. Just…do me a _big_ favor?"

"What's that?"

"Don't miss the gaki and hit _me_. I've got a _severe_ silver allergy and I don't relish the thought of having to explain to a doctor just why I wound up with a _silver bullet_ lodged in my wherever." He shrugged and grinned a little, "Although…if you _did_ hit me, that'd be more your problem than mine. I'd likely be too busy, what with the whole anaphylactic shock and all."

"Well, that explains the glove," Bill muttered. "But yeah, I won't hit you. Promise. What was that stuff you drank?"

"Home remedy for allergies," he said and then stood and stretched – his spine made a quick succession of snaps and pops. "Shall we?"

Bill smiled, "After you."

* * *

**A/N2: **I hope everyone's still with me on this, 'cause there's only chapters eight and nine left!

This tale is complete and will run nine chapters. I will update every two or three days.

Thanks for reading and remember to let me know what you think!

**Edit 09/30/09:** A sneaky word that wasn't the one I'd intended to type was spotted and shot for crimes against the fic.


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by Eric Kripke; various production elements including, but not limited to, Warner Brothers and the CW network. No money is being made from this intellectual exercise and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** I get most of my medical-type-stuff from the internet and use my Mom, a retired RN, to double-check its accuracy; even so, I still manage to get errors from time to time. So, if you know more about human anatomy and medicine than I do, please forgive any errors that crop up. Thanks.

* * *

**Ripple Effect**

_Friday, May 4, 1990  
Altadena, California_

Remus' anti-allergy potion – usually something he only had to take if he came into accidental contact with silver (an occupational hazard when involved in any of the many different aspects of hunting) – didn't eliminate his reaction to whatever circulated in the air surrounding Devil's Gate Reservoir, but it did knock it back to merely an easily-ignored distant tickle. His pistol was tucked in the front of his jeans while his wand was secured inside the sleeve of his blue-and-black flannel.

As had been discussed, Bill was perched in one of the outermost trees of Oak Grove with his favorite rifle – a Browning 30-06, complete with scope. The moon, down to a mere sliver as the new moon had been only a couple of nights previous, provided scant light – luckily, a bank of low-hanging clouds had rolled in shortly after sunset and reflected enough ambient light that Bill wasn't totally blind.

Remus was as unaffected by the lack of quality lighting as he usually was – thanks to his slight issue with full moons, most of his senses permanently operated at a slightly higher level than normal folk, and so, at just past midnight (four hours after they'd arrived at the reservoir), he was the first to spot their quarry.

No sound, no flash of light heralded the appearance of the gaki – it simply wasn't there one moment and _was_ a heartbeat later.

Much to Remus' detriment; he literally _tripped_ over the blasted thing.

_

* * *

Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

John and Bobby waited until after the boys had been put to bed – more out of respect for Sam's birthday than for any other reason – before piling into the Impala (which was, astonishingly enough, slightly better on gas than Bobby's Chevelle) and heading for Omaha – a six to seven hour drive, even with John behind the wheel.

After the sound of the engine had faded, Joshua kicked back in Bobby's favorite (patched with duct tape) recliner with one of the man's precious books on demon lore. In contrast, Caleb felt a little restless; he felt he had spent enough time already that day reading that cooking manual he'd found in the kitchen. So he turned to his primary hobby, the tools for which he always had with him. He retrieved the homemade plywood box from the bed of Joshua's disabled truck and lugged it into Bobby's kitchen. He spread some newspaper across the kitchen table, and then set to work on his latest piece.

Caleb enjoyed making things – particularly things that had the potential to blow up – and, three years earlier, he'd learned how to make the iron and silver bullets so essential to hunting. Not two weeks after he'd learned this vital skill, he and Joshua were in some southern backwater of…_Was it Kentucky? Virginia? Tennessee?_ Anyway, part of the research phase of the hunt had them visiting a local historical society's county museum. One of the displays it held was a collection of miniature weapons dating to the time of the Civil War. There was something about the display that imprinted itself on Caleb's brain, and it wasn't long before he tried his hand at making his own miniature weapon. He hadn't actually read the placard on the display, the one that said these were display pieces only, and as such, the mini-guns and cannons that Caleb began tinkering with actually _worked_.

His current piece was a scaled-down version of a Remington bolt-action .22. He was having a little difficulty getting the proportions right for the bolt – it kept coming out of the mold either too large to fit or too small to function smoothly.

"Having fun, kid?" Joshua's gravely voice startled Caleb out of the trancelike state he fell into whenever working on his 'toys'.

Caleb removed the jeweler's glass from his eye and looked up at his mentor. "Always," he said, grinning lightly. "You need somethin'?"

Joshua shook his head. "Not really. That a commission?"

Caleb's little hobby had taken off in the last year – oddball collectors couldn't seem to get enough of the miniscule firearms and paid through the nose for the privilege of owning a 'Forrester Miniature' – and had gone from supporting itself to supporting both his and Joshua's hunting; neither had to rely on fraudulent insurance or write checks on fake accounts any longer. In response to the question, Caleb shook his head. "No. This one's purely for my own amusement. A warm-up to that black-powder rifle the colonel down in Georgia wants." He sat down the watchmaker's tweezers he was using and stretched. "I'm havin' issues with the bolt, though. Damn thing either shrinks too much in cooling or not enough."

"You'll get it. You always do. What's he payin' for the black-powder?"

_Always to the point, aren't ya? Funny how your approval of my 'side-business' did a total one-eighty after I sold that first piece._ "Ten grand," Caleb replied. "And it ain't even _that_ hard to do. Wants it in-scale for a sixteen-inch doll for his son's wedding – apparently, they're doin' some sort of Old South theme." He shrugged. "Don't think I'll ever understand some people."

"As long as they're still willin' to pay for useless shit, ya don't hafta understand 'em none."

Caleb chuckled as he moved the nearly-microscopic bolt back to the electronic metal-melter. "Ain't that the truth."

_

* * *

Altadena, California_

Bill let out a string of curses and oaths that, had he done so in front of Jo, would have resulted in both Ellen beating him half to death with her cast-iron frying pan and having to sleep on the sofa for _at least_ a month. Luckily, neither his wife nor his daughter were anywhere within earshot, as the words just got worse the longer he watched through his rifle's scope.

Remus and the gaki were wrestling in the dusty ground of the reservoir, and Bill couldn't get a clear shot.

Even engaged in hand-to-hand with the thing, Remus understood Bill's trouble. _Be more than happy to get out of the way, my friend,_ he thought as he wriggled in the gaki's grasp to evade the beast's oddly small mouth. Most of his difficulty in getting away from the creature stemmed from the fact that the thing's claws were embedded in his right arm. No stranger to pain, Remus could work around the screaming agony, but short of letting the sucker remove his ulna, the werewolf couldn't see any way to get loose.

Perhaps it was the combined effort of evading the thing's mouth of needle-like teeth while dealing with the pain in his arm that caused him not to realize more was wrong with the situation than originally thought. Perhaps it was something about the gaki itself that had managed to go undocumented. Perhaps it was related to blood-loss. Or perhaps it was just one tired werewolf's rotten luck showing in the worst possible moment, but about ten minutes after running into the creature and getting snagged by its claws, Remus Lupin fainted.

From his vantage point nearly a hundred yards distant, Bill thought the worst and took a desperate shot at the creature. He missed its rapidly moving head; the bullet grazed the thing's inordinately long neck. It did manage to make the gaki rethink its position, however, and it howled as it shook Remus' arm off its claws before disappearing into the air as quickly and silently as it had appeared in the first place.

Slinging the rifle over his shoulder, Bill didn't bother with climbing down from the tree – he simply dropped and rolled on hitting the ground. Sure, his back would scream at him later, but for the time-being, he wouldn't even notice the bruises.

He sprinted across the litter-strewn hardpan to where Remus lay. A frantic search found Remus' pulse, and even without counting, Bill could tell it was running a helluva lot faster than it ought. Working as quickly as he could, just in case the gaki reappeared, Bill finished the job the creature started and ripped the rest of Remus' sleeve off. Three parallel gashes shone wetly in the minimal amount of light available. A deep puncture on the other side of his forearm sluggishly leaked blood.

Using the tattered sleeve he'd just ripped off, he tied it tightly just above Remus' elbow, all the while unknowingly echoing Remus' earlier thoughts regarding cellular phones.

He used his own overshirt and belt to secure Remus' injured arm to his chest, Bill then attempted to lift his fellow hunter into a fireman's carry. It didn't work and something let go in his back with a hot, explosive scream of pain. As John and Bobby knew, Remus carried himself in such a way that he seemed far smaller and lighter than he really was. Not only was he a solid six-four, but the years of not having to worry about where his next meal was coming from coupled with the amount of physical labor any hunter had to deal with had layered him with wiry muscles. He outweighed the five-eleven Bill by a good fifty or sixty pounds.

Still running on pure adrenaline, Bill winced and reassessed his options.

He grabbed Remus' ankles and dragged the man over the waste ground – mentally apologizing for any additional injuries this was causing all the while – to where he'd parked. That same scream of protest in his back actually managed to break through his panicky haze long enough to register before being drowned out by more important matters when Bill wrestled Remus' limp form into the passenger seat.

Leaving an impressive layer of rubber behind, Bill flicked on his hazard lights and made for the nearest hospital.

Six blocks from Devil's Gate, flashing lights appeared in Bill's rear-view. Bill flicked his car lights off and on a couple of times to let the officer know he'd seen him, but continued without slowing. The cop sped up and passed Bill's Dart, flickering his own lights in reply. The cop led Bill though three previously unknown shortcuts – in the middle of the first, a second cop car appeared behind Bill – and pulled into the ER entrance of Huntington Memorial Hospital.

Despite his mile-a-second thoughts, Bill spared a snort of amusement at the inherent irony in the hospital's name.

_

* * *

Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

The shrill ring of the old-fashioned rotary phone on the table next to his head jolted Caleb out of sleep. He fell off the multi-hued plaid couch and hit his elbow on the coffee table. He cursed the table's questionable ancestry and fumbled his way to the source of his irritation.

Knowing that middle-of-the-night phone calls were _never_ good, the nineteen year-old managed to keep his irritation out of his voice as he answered. "Hello?"

A man's voice replied, "Who is this? Dean? Never mind – get John or Bobby."

Caleb wanted to be angry that someone could _possibly_ mistake him for an eleven year-old over the phone, but couldn't quite get there. "No can do. Who is this?"

"Bill Harvelle," the man on the other end of the line replied, rather sharply in Caleb's ever-so-humble opinion.

"Oh! You're down in LA with Lupin, right?"

"Yeah. Now gimme John or Bobby, pronto. It's important."

"Sorry, Bill," Caleb replied, turning on the table lamp that shared its resting place with the phone. "They both took off for Omaha," he glanced at his watch, "six hours ago. Poltergeist."

"They up an' left you kids on your own?"

"No, Bill," Caleb managed to keep his voice from revealing how idiotic he thought the man was being for continuing to mistake him for Dean. "This is Caleb. Me an' Joshua dropped by with some car trouble. Volunteered for babysitting – the repairs on the truck are gonna take a while. Why? What happened?"

"Damn it," Bill grumbled. The unmistakable sound of a fist hitting the side of a payphone echoed through the line. Caleb winced and held the receiver a little way from his head until he was sure Bill was done with his tantrum. "You said Josh is there?"

"Yeah. I can get him if you want."

"Do it, then."

"Gimme a minute," Caleb said, stifling a sigh at the fact that most of the older hunters seemed to still think of him as 'one of the kids' and thus incapable of lending a hand.

Five minutes later, Caleb managed to wake Joshua. He handed his mentor the cordless from the kitchen before returning to the living room to listen in on the extension.

"…hunt's gone to hell in a handbasket," Bill was saying as Caleb, covering the mouthpiece, listened.

"Whacha after?" Joshua asked.

"Remus called it a gaki. You know it?"

Joshua let out a low whistle. "Damn. Yeah, I know it."

"Tell me about it. Damn thing landed Remus in the ER. Tore his arm up but good, an' the doc says he had some sort of allergic reaction to 'whatever clawed him'. As for me, I sprained my back tryin' to get him to the car after he passed out." Bill let out a huff of air. "I know I hit the damn thing – grazed its neck – but I didn't kill it, and I don't think we can handle this on our own now."

Joshua cleared his throat, "Sounds like. What the hell time _is_ it, anyway?"

"Three there."

"I'll take the next flight out of Pierre. Don't know how long that'll be, but I'll call when I land."

"We're stayin' at the Meteorite Inn in Altadena. Room 517."

"Meteorite Inn, 517. Got it."

"See you soon. Thanks, amigo."

Caleb could practically see the way Josh tended to roll his eyes at expressions of gratitude. "Not a problem."

Caleb waited until the line was dead before gently returning the heavy Bakelite receiver to its place on the phone's cradle. The sound of Joshua rumbling around and getting dressed echoed through the otherwise silent house. Caleb made himself useful and had a pot of coffee ready to go by the time Joshua returned the cordless to the kitchen. His duffle looked strangely empty, but Caleb reflected that it probably only held clothes and Josh's collection of hunting-notes – _Airlines seem to frown on bringing guns and stuff on board_.

"I assume you were listenin' in?" Joshua said, taking the full mug of caffeine from Caleb.

Caleb merely grinned a little sheepishly at Joshua. "You got everythin' you'll need?"

"Think so," Joshua replied, downing the mug of coffee. How he was able to do that without burning the hell out of his throat was a mystery Caleb had yet to unravel, even after almost a full five years of living with him. "You're gonna hafta take me to the airport. Might wanna wake the boys, let 'em know they'll be on their own for a few hours."

Caleb nodded and left Joshua to finish the coffee as he hurried up to the large room the three kids shared. Despite the size of the room – it could have housed three queen-sized beds without much difficulty – the boys slept in a triple-decker bunk, likely scavenged from a summer camp. Most of the room's space was dedicated to three _very _different sections, each centering on a particular wall.

The first section Caleb had to walk through on his way to let Dean, at least, know what was going on was strewn with various bits and pieces of electronics, with a heavy-looking homemade workbench taking up most of the wall that housed the door to the hall. The second section abutted the first and incorporated the room's window. A similarly homemade workbench took up most of the wall space, but instead of pliers and spools of wire and other tools, it held a microscope, something that looked a lot like a repurposed toaster oven, and a rack of shelves that held innumerable jars and bottles. Oddly, this second workbench also had a rather incongruous cast-iron cauldron suspended over a cold Bunsen-burner. The third and final area of the room was in the corner of the room not housing the bunk-bed and dresser and reminded Caleb rather strongly of a smaller version of the house's library, with several floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a well-cared-for (but obviously second- or even third-hand) wooden desk (topped with a green-shaded reading lamp, which was turned on, and an aging computer), and a child-sized armchair.

He didn't know the boys well enough to know which area belonged to whom, but he had to like how, even though they shared the room, they each had their own space. It brought a strangely nostalgic pang, dredging up many of the happier memories he had from growing up at St. Theresa's.

In the dim light from the reading lamp, he saw that Dean slept on the lowest bunk while Harry slept on the top and Sam was sandwiched between the two. He crouched down and, not wanting to wake the others, he laid a finger across Dean's lips.

He needn't have bothered, as the oldest of the three had been awake since the phone had rung. Dean reached up and tugged Caleb's hand away from his face before silently slipping out of bed. He padded, quiet as a cat, out of the room. Caleb had little choice but to follow.

Once in the hall, Dean pulled the bedroom door mostly-closed behind him and turned his face to Caleb.

Etched on the eleven year-old's features was a mess of emotions, thinly veiled by what he no doubt thought was an impenetrable stoic mask. Worry was most apparent to Caleb's eye, but there was also a good portion of fear, a dash of nerves, and – almost too faint to see – a touch of hope.

"What happened?" the kid asked.

The sheer resignation in his voice made Caleb wonder just how often middle-of-the-night phone calls happened in this house. "You heard the phone?"

Dean nodded. "Which one was it? Dad?"

"No," Caleb replied. "It was Bill on the phone. Remus got hurt on their hunt and had to go to the hospital, but he'll be okay." Though no one had said as much, it had been implied during Joshua's conversation with Harvelle. "Bill sprained his back, too, so they ain't gonna be able to finish the hunt on their own. He called for back-up, and since your dad an' Bobby's gone after that 'geist in Omaha, Josh is gonna fly down to LA and lend a hand."

Most of the tension drained out of Dean. "And…?"

"And I was just comin' up to let you guys know to behave while I run Josh to the airport in Pierre. I'd take you with me, but I don't think you all wanna be cramped in the back of the Chevelle just to take him to the airport an' come straight back."

Dean closed his eyes and muttered something to himself – Caleb couldn't quite catch what, exactly, the kid was saying. After a moment, he peered at Caleb through thick eyelashes. "How fast do you normally drive?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Humor me."

"Fine. I tend to actually run about three miles faster than the speed limit. Any faster, an' cops like to pull me over."

Dean squinted at Caleb and cocked his head to one side. "If you take Highway 63 to Fourteen, you can get there in about an hour-forty." He checked the digital watch on his wrist – somehow, it didn't surprise Caleb to see that it was one of those that had a calculator on it. "Hour-forty times two, say twenty minutes while there… It's quarter-past three…" The kid returned his gaze to Caleb and said, "You better be back by a quarter-past seven."

Caleb chuckled in amusement. "And whacha gonna do if I ain't?" Really, the kid sounded a lot like Joshua had the few times he'd earned a curfew.

"I'll call the cops and tell 'em my cousin stole our uncle's car after drinkin' all night." Caleb could tell that Dean meant every word.

"Damn, kid. You take lessons on that, or are you just a natural?"

Dean smiled brightly, "Basic manipulation _is_ something Remus has been teaching us."

The real hell of it was that Caleb couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

He resolved to be back by _seven_, just in case.

* * *

**A/N2: **And that's another chapter down. Just the last one to go, and (site willing) it'll be posted as the rest of the fic has been thus far, in two or three days.

Bill's rifle can be viewed here (doing as normal for ffnet site limitations – it's number 4 on the page, and his precise caliber is about halfway down the list on that page):

http (colon, slash, slash, triple-w, dot) browning (dot) com (slash) products (slash) catalog (slash) family (dot) asp (question-mark) webflag (underscore, equals sign) 003B&catalog (underscore, equals sign) B

Thanks for reading and remember to let me know what you think!


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. This story is also based on characters and situations created and owned by Eric Kripke; various production elements including, but not limited to, Warner Brothers and the CW network. No money is being made from this intellectual exercise and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

**A/N:** Here's the final chapter for your enjoyment. I know I said I wouldn't update again until tomorrow or the next day, but since it's Holy Thursday, I figure y'all will forgive me just this once!

* * *

**Ripple Effect**

_Friday, May 4, 1990  
Altadena, California_

Had Bill known about the magical world, he would have seen the sense in Remus checking himself out of the hospital AMA – as it stood, however, he chalked it up to routine lack-of-legitimate-insurance coupled with standard hunter stubbornness. _On the up side,_ he thought, bringing his car to a halt in the parking lot behind their hotel, _this means I won't hafta figure out how to be in two places at once when Joshua's plane lands._

When the pair of hunters reached their room, Remus went straight for his wooden box of jars and vials. His right arm was stitched and bandaged and wrapped in bulky layers of gauze and secured to his chest with a sling. Lupin, who had maintained a stony level of silence since leaving the hospital, rummaged clumsily through the box's contents before letting out a blistering oath that had Bill blinking at him. He hadn't imagined that his easy-going and good-natured companion could ever reach that particular level of frustration.

"What's the problem?" Bill asked, somewhat tentatively.

Remus slammed the lid of the box shut and sighed. "Nothing, Bill. Just angry at myself – I let the damn thing get too close last night and now we've got to come up with a new plan before someone else appears on the gaki's menu." That much was true, but not the whole story – he was also upset that he'd not checked the contents of his first-aid kit before leaving home; he was out of both painkillers and Scrimsy's Flesh-Knit. Though a healing charm would be both faster and more effective than Scrimsy's, Remus had never been all that good with general healing charms, and didn't even want to _try_ to cast one with his off hand. He sighed a second time and set about removing the sling. _At least the gaki didn't claw up my left arm – it would have cut my wand into pieces. It was hard enough to find one that worked for me to begin with, I don't even want to consider having to try to find a replacement._

Bill's back was constantly muttering a long string of grumbling recriminations at its owner, even through the painkillers and anti-inflamitories the ER doc had given him, so he took a seat at the kitchen table. "Joshua said he'd call us here when he landed. According to the airport, the most-likely candidate for flights he coulda taken from South Dakota to get him here would land a little past one this afternoon."

Remus made a grunting noise, but Bill wasn't sure if it was an acknowledgement of what he'd said, or if it was an involuntary pain noise resulting from the ginger way Lupin was trying to shrug into a clean t-shirt (the shirt he'd been wearing under his flannel the night before had been cut off of him at the ER). After finally getting the shirt in place, Remus returned his arm to the sling and checked the time. "Four hours or more, then." He scrubbed his left hand across his face and grimaced at the thick stubble. "I'm going to get cleaned up, then see if I can't nap for a while." A humorless chuckle rumbled from his chest. "Ever notice how hospitals keep saying 'rest up' and such, but they drop by and disturb a patient's rest at least every hour _on_ the hour? I don't understand how they expect anyone to sleep with them coming in and out of the rooms like that all the time," his voice faded a little as he disappeared into the bathroom.

Bill smiled a little at what Remus had said about hospitals – it was true, after all. _Should call home_, he thought, _let El know I ain't dead yet._ But the phone was all the way on the other side of the room and he'd managed even _less_ rest the night before than Remus. _Later. Just sit here for a minute. Rest my eyes. Hospitals suck._ Ignoring the distant complaint from his back at the slightly awkward position, he laid his head on his arms. He was asleep before Remus reemerged from the bathroom.

_

* * *

Los Angeles International Airport_

After having spent the better part of nine hours either cramped in the cattle-car portion of an airplane or idly people-watching at an airport (he'd had a layover in Minneapolis), Joshua was more than ready to kick back and relax for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, there was a damn gaki out eating people and it was up to him to stop the sucker, so rest would have to wait a while. As he followed the signs directing him to a bank of payphones, he overheard some first-class butt-muncher complaining about how the airline had lost his precious luggage. _That's why ya don't take nothin' with you ya can't afford to lose. That and not checkin' anythin'._ Joshua's bag qualified as a carry-on.

The first bank of payphones he came to were all in use already, so he kept walking. In a place the size of LAX, there had to be more phones between him and the door.

The second bank were all marked 'out of order'.

Oddly, Joshua didn't spot any further phones before he reached the exit. Well, that's not _quite_ true. He spotted four white-collars yakking on those port-a-bricks that supposedly caused brain-tumors, and numerous in-house phones, but none of those would help _him_ any.

Shrugging mentally, he hailed a taxi.

"Where to?" the cabbie asked.

"The Meteorite Inn, Altadena," Joshua replied.

_

* * *

Altadena, California_

Loud knocking on their door managed to wake both Bill and Remus from their respective naps. Momentarily forgetting about his sprained back, Bill sat up too quickly, causing that particular body part to commence an attack of epic proportions on his nerve-endings. Remus was in a somewhat similar state, as the last of the painkillers he'd been given at the hospital had worn off in his sleep. However, Remus' lifelong dance with pain and suffering allowed him to push aside the fact that he wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and whimper. He climbed to his feet.

"Open up, guys, it's me," echoed through the thin wood of the motel room's door just as Remus reached it and pulled it open.

"Hey, Joshua," the werewolf said through a tight smile that more closely resembled a grimace.

Joshua let out a low whistle. "Damn, Lupin. You look like hell." The older hunter stepped into the room and tossed his duffle on one of the armchairs in the corner. "You too, Harvelle."

Bill was pale and breathing slowly through his teeth, silently willing the muscles in his back to quit seizing. He was sure if he could just move – at all – the pain would mysteriously vanish. _Never falling asleep at a table ever again._ He still managed something resembling a nod in Joshua's direction, though.

Remus shut the door and quickly weighed his options. Making a snap decision – because he simply didn't bloody _care_ about secrecy laws in his current state – he asked, "You still carry that mirror?"

Joshua turned slightly and quirked an eyebrow; he knew that Bill wasn't currently aware of the wizarding world and couldn't imagine just what Remus had in mind bringing it up. "Yeah," he replied, drawing the word out. "Whacha need it for?"

Forcing himself to remain civil – pain always had made him rather snarky and foul-tempered – Remus said, "Call Rachel. I'm out of Scrimsy's and painkillers and there's no way I can deal with this on my own right now." While speaking, he gestured to his injured arm, still strapped down by the sling.

Ever so slowly, the muscle spasms in his back quieted down and Bill finally reached a state where he felt as though he'd survive. _Hope this clears up before Jo's well enough to start buggin' me about that trip to KC,_ he thought before the words Joshua and Remus had exchanged caught up with him. _Huh? Mirror? What the hell's that got to do with a phone call?_ Seeing no point in remaining confused, he carefully climbed to his feet – feeling like a man twice his age as he did so – and asked, "What?"

Joshua looked from Remus to Bill and back and shrugged at Lupin while searching his pockets for the small compact mirror that was his primary connection with his sister and their parents.

Remus accurately interpreted the motion as 'it's your idea, so it's up to you to explain it to him'. The werewolf, still wrestling with keeping the pain he was in from interfering with his ability to converse on a somewhat-civil level, sighed. "Long story or short story?"

Bill blinked. "Don't care," he said, "just…_what_?"

"Short, then," Remus said, leaning against the wall as Joshua located the small folding mirror and walked to the other side of the room. "Magic – real, wand-waving magic, like in fairy-tales and Disney flicks, exists. I'm a wizard, Joshua's a squib, and you're a muggle. Joshua's sister, Rachel, is a board-certified alchemist, specializing in the applications of healing magic. The mirror he carries is rather like a telephone, only without the need for batteries, and he's calling Rachel to – hopefully – get her to apparate or portkey here and get us both back to feeling like human beings and not roadkill."

Remus was _almost_ able to laugh at how his fly-by explanation seemed to only serve to confuse Bill further. Across the room, Joshua snapped the mirror shut and shook his head at his companions. "Sorry, Billy-boy. Remus is usually more patient." He turned his attention to the werewolf long enough to say, "You must _really_ be hurtin', amigo." Remus rolled his eyes, but remained silent.

Bill shuffle-walked over to his bed and stretched out with a small groan. "So, are you gonna clear things up or not?" he asked Joshua.

"S'pose I'm gonna hafta, ain't I? Got a li'l time to kill 'til Rach gets here anyway – she said she'll be here in about half an hour." Joshua took a seat on Remus' bed and propped his elbows on his knees. "First off, you gotta keep in mind what we do – it'll help, trust me."

"How's that?" Bill asked.

"We hunt down crap most folks don't believe in. Magic's like that – most folks don't believe in it, but it _is _real."

"Suspension of disbelief – gotcha." Bill made a checkmark motion in the air above his head.

"Okay, so where do I start?"

"How about with the words Remus mentioned? I mean, I think I got 'wizard' – assuming you all ain't off your rockers, that'd be a guy who uses magic, right?"

Joshua nodded. "Yep. The ability's a helluva lot like…oh, I dunno…smarts, I s'pose. It tends to run in families, but it can crop up in a normal family – normal folks are called 'muggles' or 'mundanes' dependin' on just who you're talkin' to. Sometimes the opposite's true and someone who can't use magic is born to a magical family, called a squib – that'd be me. Is actually how I got into huntin' – when I was a kid, before we figured out for-sure that I wasn't a wizard, I'd wanted to be an auror. An auror is for wizards what police are for the rest of us. When that dream got shattered, I started tryin' to find out what I could do without magic to basically do the same job – without severin' all ties with my family, that is." He ran a hand though his graying, dark brown hair. "Look, a lotta this is real complicated to explain, but I'll give you a better run-down when you ain't feelin' like hell."

Bill made another checkmark motion. "And what's an alchemist? I mean, other than the forerunner to modern chemistry?"

Joshua chuckled. "That'd be someone who's got the highest…well, I guess they're like degrees, in at least three branches of magic. Rach's got masteries in Potions, Charms, Runes, and Arithmancy – and she's qualified as a healer, that's a magical doctor – and uses all that to come up with new and better healing treatments."

This time, Bill was the one who chuckled. "So you weren't lyin' none when you said your sis was a doctor. You also said your pop was a lawyer – that still true, or is it different?"

"No, that part's still true. The wizarding world still's got bureaucracy to deal with, after all." Joshua turned the conversation away from all things magic and towards the cause of Bill's and Remus' current states. "So, just what happened last night?"

Filling Joshua in took the remaining time until Rachel showed. Any lingering doubt Bill might have held melted entirely when she used her wand to completely heal the gashes on Remus' arm. The wounds left behind angry, pink scars, but she mentioned to Lupin that they'd fade in time. Then it was Bill's turn, and by the time his best friend's older sister had finished, Bill was back to his usual self. "You should bottle that," he told her, "and sell it."

Rachel smirked, "What makes you think I _don't_?"

"Later, Billy-boy," Joshua interrupted. "Like I said, questions come later – when we ain't got a gaki on the loose."

Rachel paused in handing a small package to a much-cheerier Lupin. "A gaki? You want me to alert –"

"No, sis, we can handle it," Joshua cut her off. "If we can't get it tonight, I'll let ya know, okay?"

Rachel shrugged, "I know you know what you're doing, Joshie, but if _anything_ goes wrong, I want you to call me immediately – do you understand me?"

The forty-eight year-old hunter closed his eyes and hoped like hell his fellow hunters hadn't heard the embarrassing nickname before meeting his sister's steady gaze. "Sure thing, Rach. Send my love to Mom and Dad, will ya? And let Mom know I'll _try_ to make it to the Samhain party this year, but I can't promise nothin'."

After a round of good-byes to Rachel, the three hunters sat down and got to work on planning for the hunt that night.

_

* * *

Saturday, May 5, 1990  
Altadena, California_

Having Joshua there seemed to make all the difference – the gaki fell to multiple silver slugs fired from Bill's rifle, Remus' revolver, and the spare semi-automatic Colt Bill had loaned Joshua. Though 'fall' wasn't quite the right word. It had actually exploded in a shower of revolting viscera which evaporated into foul-smelling smoke after a few moments, much to the hunters' relief.

It was almost anti-climactic, particularly after they'd waited until nearly three in the morning for the creature to show.

The three hunters – more than ready for some decent sleep – returned to the motel and crashed. Remus was the first to awake at a little past ten, and, after getting dressed for the day, headed out to bring breakfast back for everyone. While waiting for the diner he'd located to fill his orders, Remus availed himself to the payphone near the door to call home and let everyone know he was fine and would be returning soon.

_

* * *

Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

Caleb returned the cordless phone to its charger on the wall of the kitchen and took a deep, steadying breath.

It didn't help to quell the panic.

_Relax. You've got time. It's not like they're going to be flying back. They're driving Bill's Dart. So, you've got at _least_ twenty hours or so. Likely longer. I know Josh don't like havin' to sleep in a car, so they'll stop for the night somewhere along the way._

His thoughts were similarly unhelpful and couldn't quite drown out the ongoing chant of _what the hell am I gonna do _and _how the hell do I fix this_ and _John's gonna _kill_ me an' Bobby's gonna _help_ an' Remus'll freakin' _eat_ whatever's left_.

A small, grey tabby with white socks on all four paws (still in the clumsy fluffball stage of kitten-growth) leapt on one of the kitchen chairs, followed by the tabletop where Caleb still had his hobby-tools spread out on newspaper. Caleb was too busy trying to marshal his thoughts into some sort of useful order to notice when the kitten tugged the strap of a miniature sniper-rifle out of the 'complete, but not yet shipped' compartment of his hobby-box.

The metallic clatter of the miniaturized gun hitting the linoleum floor jarred Caleb's awareness back to the here-and-now.

As the kitten, gun-strap still firmly grasped in its mouth, took off for the door in a streak of grey, Caleb shouted after it. "Dean! Get your ass back here an' leave my shit alone!"

_

* * *

Altadena, California_

On returning to the hotel with their meals, Remus couldn't help but have the feeling that something was up back home. He tried to ignore it, however. _If it was anything serious, Caleb would have told me._

He, Joshua, and Bill ate, then packed up their gear and headed out at the motel's checkout time of noon.

They had a long drive ahead of them – a full two days on the road – but Remus was sure that they wouldn't be bored. Bill undoubtedly still had questions that needed answered and he likewise needed to be informed of the necessity of keeping his newfound knowledge of the wizarding world under his hat.

_

* * *

Monday, May 7, 1990  
Eagle Butte, South Dakota_

Bobby startled awake when the Impala came to a halt. He rubbed the sleep-sand out of his eyes and took a look around. They were home.

The 'geist he and John had gone after had been uniquely simple – it really hadn't been necessary to have two hunters on it, but most poltergeists weren't as under-powered as the one in Omaha had been.

The one and only downside that Bobby could see was the fact that it was now drizzling and he still had to finish the repairs on the minivan for Audry Walsh.

Inside, Dean heard his dad's car pull up and leveled a glare that could stop a rampaging hippogriff in its tracks at his brothers and Caleb. "You _promise_ that what happened ain't gonna _ever_ be talked about again?"

Both Sam and Harry nodded solemnly. Caleb smirked and said, "As long as you don't bring it up first, kiddo."

The sound of Bobby's and John's boots sounded on the porch just as a second car could be heard approaching on the drive. Dean peeked out the living room window. "Looks like Remus is back, too," he said, satisfied that what had happened while his dad and uncles were gone would remain just among the four who'd been there to experience it.

Over the course of the next few hours, all the adult hunters traded stories on their most recent hunts while the kids listened intently. Near the end of the conversation, just as Bill was getting ready to push on home, Remus chuckled.

"What?" Bobby asked.

"Just…One good thing came of that whole mess down in LA."

"What's that?" Bill couldn't help but ask.

"Well, I now know I've got _three_ allergies," Remus replied.

"Which three?" the question was simultaneously posed by both Bill and Caleb.

"Silver, artichokes, and – apparently – gaki." Remus shot a grin in Joshua's direction. "Any more gaki show, and they're all yours."

"No problem," Joshua grinned back. "Hate to hafta bug Rach again."

_Finite incantatum._

* * *

**A/N2: **The details on just what Caleb and the boys went through is the freakin' plot-bunny that kept spawning all these side-plots. I do hope to have it written soon, so keep an eye out for the upcoming _Opposable Thumbs are Awesome_ (though I'm not sure just when it'll get posted).

This tale is now complete and fully posted. \o/YAY!

Thanks for reading and remember to let me know what you think!


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